A Mommy Story

I had mentioned my not-so-nutritious high school lunches in a meme a few weeks ago: Snickers bar and fries. It’s true, it was my primary lunch in high school. Truthfully, I learned how to work the system with school lunches from an early age.

In elementary school, we didn’t have variety when it came to lunch. You had one meal, no a la carte options, and the only choice you had was white or chocolate milk. And half the time the chocolate milk was gone before you got to the cashier. As a picky eater, I generally scoffed at most of the food I was given. Vegetables? Never. Fruit? Only if it was the mixed fruit swimming in syrup. No soupy noodles, no meatloaf, and chicken patty sandwiches only if I could drown it in ketchup. If my mom knew how much money was wasted on food I didn’t eat, she’d probably make me start paying it back with interest.

The only days I was guaranteed to eat were the days when french fries or pizza (or both) were served. Oh, how I loved those little institutional rectangular pizzas! The little chunks of highly processed pepperoni, the greasy cheese that came off in one piece…even the slightly cardboard crust was heaven to me. No other food, at home or anywhere else, could compare to the school pizza.

In middle school, those pizzas were still on the menu, but now we had an a la carte line, and desserts! Fries were always on the a la carte line, so I’d always have a serving of fried spuds, but I’d save extra lunch money for pizza days, when I could get not one, but TWO pizzas! Each lunch was always finished with an ice cream sandwich, also.

I wonder if they still serve those little rectangle pizzas in school? I remember going to college and being slightly disappointed that the dining halls didn’t have these little greasy treasures. Do they sell these pizzas to the public?

Looking back over my school lunches, I know I made a lot of bad choices. Nutrition wasn’t exactly a concern for me – it had to taste good. And while the school did their job of providing balanced meals, they couldn’t make me eat the parts that were healthier than others. Of course, the addition of the a la carte line in middle and high school, plus the further addition of a soda machine and student-run snack store filled with candy bars and chips in high school didn’t exactly further the cause of healthy eating.

I know I won’t be able to make my daughters eat healthy in school, however I hope I can encourage them to do better than I did. My eating habits led to worse eating habits which led to weight gain and poor self-esteem. And I hope the schools will continue to look for new ways to encourage healthy eating as well, such as removing the soda and snack machines or forbidding their use during lunch.

But you can bet I’ll still encourage them to try the pizza.

This post is part of the Blog Blast hosted by Parent Bloggers Network. Check out School Menu and its parental counterpart Family Everyday, two sites that work together with School Food Services Directors to provide and promote healthy eating and physical fitness for kids and their parents.