Growing up, I ate school lunches.

My parents felt it was easier to buy me a $1.25 lunch ticket each week - that’s right, five meals for $1.25 - than to pack a lunch.  And since I packed lunches for my older daughter at her day care back east, I have to agree with them.  Cooking veggies and chopping up fruit and making grilled cheese sandwiches EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT. got to be tiring.  It’s no wonder that most of her classmates had lunches full of packaged preservatives.  I was about ready to succumb to Lunchables myself when we moved and found a day care that served lunch.

Sometimes I packed my own lunch, in my (shudder) Strawberry Shortcake lunchbox.  The thermos didn’t function well though, so I bought my own milk.  Seven cents for white milk, ten cents for chocolate - these were the days when a penny was actually worth something.

But most of the time I ate the school lunch.

I loved the pizza and the fish sandwiches.  Fish was always offered on Fridays, and I was an adult before I understood why.  The pizza was a rectangular slab with congealed cheese and specks of sausage, but it was pretty good.  I ate the corn and the so-called Texas Toast and would have a spoonful or two of mushy olive green peas.  Spaghetti was passable.  Salisbury steak was strange, but not inedible.  Tomato soup was a no-go.

When I got to middle school, they served nachos and ice cream bars in the cafeteria.  Guess where most of my lunch money went?

When I got to high school, they served pop tarts each morning.  And we had open lunch, which meant we could walk off campus to a local liquor store that also sold candy bars and chips.  When my friends and I could drive, we went to Noble Roman’s for pizza and breadsticks (also a good place to get served sangria underage at night - filthy-minded waiters there) or to Burger King (also known as BK Lounge for some reason that escapes me now).

School lunches aren’t inherently bad - it’s just all of the other add-ons that are offered that tempt kids away from the good stuff.  If they didn’t sell ice cream or pop tarts or soda, maybe more kids would eat more of the healthy foods that comprise a balanced meal.

Instead, schools want to raise money.  And sponsorships help them do that.  Even the high school DECA program would make money selling candy bars on those days that it was too cold to walk off campus.  I understand the need for fundraising, but couldn’t they sell something else, like carrot sticks?

We’ve still got another year before we’re faced with the decision to buy school lunches or pack lunches for our older daughter.  Granted, she’s now old enough to help pack her own lunch.  And she’d rather eat a bowl of peas than a school cafeteria fish sandwich.  So at this point, I’m leaning toward getting back in the habit of packing lunches.

After all, she’s got all that time at college to gorge on pizza.

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.