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Primary school lunches! British vs American | Evan Edinger & Noahfinnce
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- Опубліковано 13 сер 2022
- Let's look at menus from US and UK school! Who wants PB&J?
Noah's channel: / noahfinnce
Vlog channel / evanedinger
Thank you so much for watching! Hope you enjoyed it!
If you're new to my channel and videos, hi! I'm Evan Edinger, and I make weekly "comedy" videos every Sunday evening. As an American living in London I love noticing the funny differences between the cultures and one of my most popular video series is my British VS American one. I'm also known for making terrible puns so sorry in advance. Hope to see you around, and I'll see you next Sunday! :)
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One of the reasons the UK dinners are more nutritious and like an adult meal as well, is because for some kids, that's the only hot/proper meal they get a day! They've always had an emphasis on it because of that.
Another thing I remember about primary school dinners was we had special birthday lunches! If it was your birthday, you would get a special table and you could invite your friends onto that table and choose which dinner you would like (almost always fish and chips lol) and we'd also get special red trays (the usual ones were yellow).
For lots of kids in America this reigns true as well. Food insecurity runs rampant not only in the low income areas but also in some better off communities. At our school specifically some of the lunch ladies would pack up left over food (secretly of course) and allow some of those kids to take the food home.
same in the us though
I had never thought about there being a difference between adult food and child food because at home us kids also ate the same things as our parents. I do remember that meals were required to meet nutritional standards but in UK the government has a vested interest in keeping people healthy as it saves money for the NHS.
This was for people who uad allergies, except for special food unless they're allergic to everything available
@@Phiyedough and I wonder why they aren’t invested in making healthy children in the us. All about the 💰
I love how horrified Noah looks when Evan is describing the pre-portioned meals.
He’s horrified on behalf of the UK. BRING BACK TURKEY TWIZZLERS!
Well it's the correct reaktion
@Ro Bear So is ketchup. How, oh how, did we get here?
These are districts with centralized kitchens. I was horrified the first time I saw kids served from rolling racks, too, but it probably makes fiscal sense.
I was also horrified
As a British person, after Jamie Oliver, I was a major lover of school dinners. Atleast at my primary, they where always freshly made and you could tell. They tasted like care had been put into them, and we had 2 options every day, with two options of desert aswell. So there was alot of choice.
Chicken pie was always a favourite of mine.....the dinners definitely went down hill in secondary
dinners in high school were so rank compared to primary school. i finished primary school in 2011 and id do anything to have a square pizza and a cornflake tart
I went to school in 1950 long before Jamie Oliver was thought of. The food we had at school was exactly the same as the food we had at home, meat, two vegetables plus potatoes roast or mashed no chips also a pudding. Everything was cooked in the school.
Agreed! i finished primary school in 2017 and my favourite thing about school was the lunches. They were all properly cooked, fresh in the kitchens. They were amazing. Secondary school food was so shit. just sandwiches and paninis. and all over priced. i’m broke so my school dinners are always covered by school and everything but i couldn’t afford a snack at break if i wanted an actual sandwich and a biscuit at lunch.
My experience was very similar. The primary school lunches were made with so much love. I even built a rapport with the amazing cooks who ended up saving me a portion of my favourite desserts whenever they were on the menu. Secondary school meals were so bad in comparison that students started petitions and accounts dedicated to documenting the absolutely awful quality of the food.
It seems like your primary school is a bit like mine, all high quality and lovely food. My favourite food there was probably one of the most loved ones, the Tuesday taco. It was very nice and had the best chocolate cake for dessert
i once reliably informed by a dinner lady that the "secret brownie"'s secret ingredient was beetroot- apparently they also snuck loads of veggies into other foods too
That's quite normal actually, especially since Red Velvet cake has Beetroot in it too
@@Virgil-Arcanum well it is suppose to- but most of time it made with food colouring now- but yeah it like a hidden adult talent of sneaking hidden veg into a meal for kids 😊
@@Virgil-Arcanum i am shook,
@@Virgil-Arcanum Yes! Best Red Velvet cake is made with beetroot.
I teach in a UK primary school and am always astounded by the food available. Our children get:
A free bagel (funded by a charity, to be served first thing in case they missed breakfast)
Free milk (government funded- only for reception age so children and 4-5)
Free fruit for playtime (government funded- all KS1 children so age 4-7)
Free dinner for KS1 children with the option of hot dinner, vegetarian, jacket potato or a sandwich plus dessert, fruit and a salad bar. Prices are kept low for KS2 children and children whose parents earn below a certain threshold get free dinners. Dinners are all paid for online by parents so there's no concern about making it obvious who is getting free food.
The lunch options are very "adult" and I occasionally have to ask the cook what they are before I read the menu to the children in a morning 😂
Everything is cooked on site daily and is always delicious!
Was the same in my primary school! Our cooks were a true part of the school and even came to assembly every morning, they formed relationships with us. It was a very rare occasion I have a packed lunch as there was always something for everyone on the menu or a jacket potato was always a favourite for me. It great to hear it is still the same, I miss Primary School!
Dang American here the lunches you can expect were "fresh" in a sense they were warmed up that day. I really didn't like getting school lunches I would bring a lunch from home. We Americans are fed highly processed foods from the start and it doesn't get better from there.
I love this so much! Pretty much identical to when I was in primary school too :)
Not really free though is it, let's be honest
That’s actually really good, my primary school did nothing like that (I’m almost 26 now though so this is going back a while) if you didn’t have money for food or a packed lunch, you went without. I remember having a little snack sized pack of party rings taken off me at break time because the teacher said they were “unhealthy” cause I guess they’d rather kids have no food to eat at all than eat a couple of biscuits 😹
It's really common for schools in the UK to have nut-free kitchens. I'm amazed PB&J is such a staple from the point of view of allergies, even if it probably is one of the more nutritious things on the menu!
I was really shocked about that! our school cafeterias in the US never served nuts and where I work now lots of the classrooms are nut free. I brought peanut butter in my lunch but the cafeteria didn't serve it
@@SimberPlays In the UK you can't bring nuts into school with your packed lunch either - if a teacher/dinner lady spots you've got something nutty, they'll ask you not to eat it until the end of the day and just mention it to the parent when you go home as a reminder that nuts aren't allowed
At least at every school I’ve been at the PB&Js are pre packaged as well such as uncrustables
We never had any special rules on what to bring for breakfast in school. And I had all kinds of things over the years, depending on what I prepared for the day. From whole bread sandwiches to snickers and coke.
Our school serves sunbutter but still usually call it pb&j
I love how Noah gets more and more horrified by US school food.
It cant be as bad as liver and onions like what we got
@@paulguise698- I love bacon, liver, onions, mash and gravy - Yum! Yum!
@@paulguise698 Taste wise no, health wise ours is just generally better
As a kid, I would've loved and preferred the US lunches to the UK ones. But as a 20 y.o man, I see why it wouldn't be the best
@@paulguise698
You got to be kidding us.
Ox liver baked with onion gravy, is to die for.
Here in Australia it’s lambs fry and bacon which is lamb liver fried with bacon.
No where near as good but better then nothing.
"It seems like plastic on a plate" - Noahfinnce perfectly describes American food. =)
As someone who went to school before the Jamie Oliver thing, I can confirm that we were never as bad as the US sounds. There were always multiple options and they felt like meals not snacks. They just didn't always contain a lot of veg etc.
The sad thing is American school lunches were not always this bad. Back in the 70s & 80s we had sloppy Joe's, spaghetti, bean and franks, lasagna, salsbury syeak, tuna casserole, and obviously pizza on Fridays.
Up until the mid 90s every school had full kitchen and meals were cooked from scratch at the school.
But somehow the dept of Ed contracted with a food company to feed school kids. The food came in frozen pre-cooked and the schools just needed to heat and serve.
Not only did the menu turn to crap, so did the quality. Which somehow got even worse when Obama attempted to make school lunches healthier again.
The food company then just lowered salt and sugar to make it all "healthier ". And portions shrunk.
My kids hated school lunches do much they refused to eat it. It felt so bad that the low income kids had no choice but to eat it.
I second this. It was usually something like shepherd's pie or lasagna or something at my school. That American one looks like a way to make a bunch of sick kids.
Turkey dinosaurs, croquettes, and peas. Then jelly and ice cream for pud. To drink was orange juice (with or without bits)
yeah exactly. solid meals, lacking in salad but not horrendous for your health... the tuck shop on the other hand lol
For me (secondary school 1998-2005) I reckon 80% of my school just had either a chip butty or chips and gravy every single day. I personally had either a burger or two sausages on a roll every day.
So less sugar but not sure it was healthier!
One thing that I think that wasn't mentioned is that when you're at primary school (below Year 3 I think) they used to give us free milk and fruit during break time. And then when you're older your parents can pay for your milk. I remember being jealous of all the ones with milk. This is in the UK in a Catholic Primary school though.
Same in standard primary schools too.
In my school we had the free fruit but we never got milk during break time, but sometimes instead of fruit they'd just give us a whole raw carrot which sounds rlly strange to me looking back on it (this was also below year 3 in a catholic primary school)
During my lower school years (at an independent prep school), we were given the choice between water, milk or squash (liquid equivalent of Kool Aid to non-squash drinkers) and a biscuit. Not the healthiest option, but the lunches were pretty healthy as far as I can remember.
Used to be free in the 80s but Thatcher stopped that.
This started in the 2000s, I never had it at school, we brought in our own snacks, but my son did. My mum remembers it from way back and she said it would be frozen in the winter and cheesy/lumpy in summer. I think it was standard until "Thatcher milk snatcher" stopped it and then there was a push for it to come back later on.
I'm 30, so I was in school a fair while before the "Jamie Oliver Revolution" kicked in, and despite the fact that there was some deep-fried food, and turkey twizzlers and the like, it was *never* as bad as what you're describing in the States. At least not in my experience with school lunches. Even then we had multiple options for our meals, and there was always a selection of vegetables to have with your lunch. The "salad bar" thing wasn't really a thing for me until we got to secondary school though.
When I was a kid, I remembered it being so strange how the teachers got a salad bar and more drink options, while kids had to have milk and whatever they passed off as food. I was made to feel like it was perfectly normal and I was being absurd. I feel kind of jealous that salad bar's are an option, but I'm glad.
"That looks like adult food!"
Well...should they look different? 😅 Our (Czech Republic, around 2008-2012) lunches are served on plates (how do you mix anything on those trays you have??) and were all like "adult food", just smaller portions.
Just off the top of my head: schnitzel with mashed potatoes, chicken with rice and brown sauce, sweet dumplings with fruit filling, pork with bread knödel slices (you told the lunch person how many slices you wanted, I usually got four), hard-boiled eggs with dill sauce and potatoes, fish fillet - usually Czech (or adjacent) dishes and no fries/chips or pizza. Also, soups!! Always a soup and a main course. (there was some odd stuff too, because there were a ton of options throughout the year, but it would still be a proper portion at least)
Only sometimes there was random extra stuff ("dessert", I guess) such as: an apple, a little bowl of carrot/cucumber/red beet salad, a square piece of cake, a Kinder Pinguí etc. 😂
Yeah, at my schools in the UK we nearly always had food on plates and with proper utensils, etc. unless it was a day where we'd opted for just a "light" lunch like a baguette sandwich, instead of a meal. We always got the choice.
same in Poland (2005-2010) and I remember they'd tell us to at least eat the meat and skip everything else if we don't want it lmao, the meat culture was strong there
Even in the U.S., the idea that children and adults eat different food is a fairly recent thing.
My experience from Czech elementary school is about 1994 -2003 and lot of what you say sounds lot of what I remember ( tho I remember high school but more 2003-2007) I remember in general on wednesday was often sweet lunch buchtičky se šodó and in elementary we got like half a chodský koláč..... and I remember the UHO -universal brown sauce.
polish similar - dinner / lunch = always soup and second dish
One time at our school, a kid threw a slice of pizza at the wall as a joke and it stuck to the wall. And stayed there for like two days. So I’d like to say our school lunches were pretty great :)
😂😂😭😭
None of the staff thought to clean it?
My dad said at his high school the fries were so greasy that kids would throw them at the wall and see whose stayed the longest
In my High school, there were 5-or so Haribo Love-hearts stuck to the dining room ceiling. Nobody knows how they got there. They'd been there for at least a decade (literally, they were there when my brother started High School, and still there when I left)
i remember one time i dropped an entire thing of chocolate milk on the floor and no one ever cleaned it up and they talked about it in the whole school assembly 😭😭
I work in a primary school and their school lunches are pretty good-better than the stuff I bring for myself some days lmao.
We have a week 1, 2 & 3 menu that just keeps rotating all year and they have great stuff like curries, pasta bake/bolognese/lasagna, beef or bean burgers and chips, roast dinners, pizzas, fish and chips . The kids even have the option for a jacket potato every day as well. Its honestly great and I remember having this sort of stuff when I was in school as well so I don't think these lunches are a recent development either
Why don't you have a hot lunch then yourself?
@@kawaiilotus many do
I left working at school this febuary (after 7 years), working as a "Dinner Gentleman".
I went to Secondary School during the "Jamie Oliver" phase and i MISS MY TURKEY TWISLERS reeeee
I was thinking, when he was saying their other option was pb&j, that it is like our option of a jacket potato.. which is a much better option. My daughter regularly goes for that as she’s quite fussy. She won’t eat them at home though there must be something special about the school ones that she just loves.
@kawaiilotus genuinely depends on the school. I worked at an inner city school and teachers were told not to partake of the school lunches because if the number of lunches served met a certain threshold above the amount of students actually getting lunch (a lunch tray getting dumped and general waste of excess food was in the same threshold as someone other than a student buying or receiving lunch) it could jeopardize the school funding for lunches from the district, which is what ensured the free and reduced lunch program would stay up and running. I’d like to hope that the UK doesn’t have that issue at all, but it’s a legitimate issue in many places in the US. Although amusingly for an American school lunch it was surprisingly well rounded. Don’t think I saw a single day where tinned fruit cocktail was used instead of fresh fruits and berries, whereas that was the “serving of fruit” for every school lunch when I was growing up haha
Attending Primary School post Jamie Oliver, the meals on a whole were fairly good. There were iconic dishes like the sprinkle cake which was often served at my first Primary School and fudge tart at my second. Also they used to serve this really nice lemon cake at my second. Although I heard that when I left, the meals went downhill. I'm not sure what the food's like now.
same but my schools meals were absolutely terrible 😂 i went to a scottish primary school and the food just slowly worse as it went along so i always had packed lunch
It’s so funny how Ethan’s accent is still fairly American but if he gets taken by surprise he just goes, “Wot?” in the most British-sounding voice. Idk language is fascinating to me.
I also agree, the French toast sticks absolutely SLAPPED
31 year old UK person here. I didn't have school dinners that often, but I was always excited about bangers and mash day with peas and gravy. If you got in the canteen late and there were leftovers you could go up for seconds! I remember there was always a dessert option of 2 jacobs crackers and a packet of butter as the 'healthy' alternative to cake/apple pie/ice cream swirl
It was dairylea in mine instead of butter.
At my Primary School, sometimes the food ran out and the people who were last or second to last had to have some weird alternative meal (if I could call it that).
we had crackers too, but they were served with a laughing cow cheese or a cheese stick
god ive forgotten about crackers and cheese and then the little year 1s and 2s had to ask the dinner ladies to help them open the packets
In secondary school - chicken ham and mushroom pie Omg!! It went so quick but if there was none left we would say (table of 6) to the dinner ladies could we just have our pudding please we don't like pork cobbler 🤢 or whatever it was... We knew they had put some aside for themselves so they always used to give it up so we had a proper meal 😉😁
When it comes to Jamie Oliver, there’s a massive generational divide in how he’s viewed. Most of the vitriol, I’d say, comes from younger millennials who knew the trashy turkey twizzler days at first, and then had broccoli stems shoved down their throats post-2005. I’m Gen Z and me and my peers enjoyed the lunches, like the ones Evan was describing, and geriatric millennials / older kind of wish they’d had that at school.
What I will say, however, looking back, is that the way Jamie went about a lot of his food education was VERY classist. His mantra was about “clean” and “dirty” foods, i.e. cheap foods were bad because they were cheap. Jamie’s School Dinners was, ostensibly, a piece of entertainment for Channel 4, aimed at his middle class audience who could laugh at the kids of Kidbrooke and Rotherham for eating “turkey bleedin’ twangers” while their kids were being fed the exceptionally healthy burgers, bangers, gingerbread and mince pies he was shilling for Sainsbury’s as part of that 11-year advertising deal when I was growing up.
It’s good kids are being fed proper food, but you don’t combat obesity by calling for a ban on 2-for-1 pizza deals.
Honestly, I feel like there's an awful lot of programs that are just laughing at the poor and it makes me feel upset 😅
It's kinda like the US laughing at obesity, both that and poverty are the fault of the government, yet the people who aren't suffering from it can just watch it for entertainment :((
I remember hating Jamie Oliver as a kid for getting our vending machines removed but as an adult, I'm so grateful there wasn't junk surrounding the school 24/7. I will give him that haha
I was pre-oliver all the way through and honestly primary school, the food was much like i ate at home usually meat and 2 veg with potatoes but it was a pretty good school. the secondary was awful, chips, burgers, pizza and hotdogs etc but mostly it was a very hectic environment to eat in so you felt like you had to rush through getting it and eating it. and you never felt like you had actually eaten a meal you just filled a hole and i felt constantly hungry.
when I left home and was living in a bedsit my mum used to call me and asked if I was eating healthily I was permanently skint so I would buy what's cheapest and its not always good for you.
He tried to do the same thing in America. I remember watching his shows here about healthy eating.
I grew up in New Zealand and we didn't have a cafeteria, we had "tuck shops". Majority of children brought their own lunch and then could buy small snacks at the tuck shop if your parents gave you some spare change to spend. You could put in orders for things like pizza and sandwiches and pick it up at the tuck shop at lunch time but that was like a treat once a week or so, and not everyday. We ate our lunch outside wherever we wanted, there was covering for shade and for rain, or they would unlock the classroom if it was raining too much.
It’s similar in Australia. We typically have a canteen where you can buy drinks and snacks before school, at recess or lunch. You can place an order for lunch from a rotating menu but this is generally a one-off, infrequent event and is definitely not the norm for most students, who bring their own food from home (we call it a “packed lunch”). The main exception is for boarders who are students from remote, rural areas or overseas and live at school during the school term. They have their own cafeteria for lunch (and I can’t speak for the quality of the food as I’ve never properly experienced it) but they are a minority. Boarders and boarding also only occurs at private schools. Most schools - public or private - have a canteen, however.
In terms of the standard of food itself:
By having “packed lunches” (this includes snacks for recess etc.), the quality and “healthy-ness” is left largely to the parents of the individual student…so it varies. Some people eat well, others don’t. I was lucky enough to have pretty health-conscious parents but I was sometimes jealous of the snacks other kids brought in as food 😒
I can’t speak for people who attended other schools but my own school’s canteen was not particularly known for being healthy. That was part of the treat of it though, as it was not an everyday occurrence. Parents would give you lunch money as a treat or if they were pressed for time. You would use spare change for buying ice-cream or icy-poles in summer to cool down (it gets really hot here in Oz ☀️🥵) and roll-up, chicken strips or pumpkin scones at any other time. I sometimes got to order my lunch on Fridays when stuffed potato was on the menu. It was my favourite…Think of a big jacket potato stuffed with bacon bits and spring onion and baked with a generous layer of cheese over the top - yum! 😋
This is probably the best way.
It's similar in my elementary school in canada, except all snack and lunches were in the classroom, and we went outside for recess afterwards. In high-school there was a cafeteria, but you could also get stuff outside the school. basically you could go where you wanted but you had to be back before lunch was over.
In the US during the 80's, I remember having little weekly payment envelopes for school lunch or milk. Milk was like, some kind of big deal. You could get the school lunch which came with milk, or you could get JUST the milk (different colored envelopes).
"It's America, we love cheese" well guess what Evan, in France too we love cheese. But we still know how to make a real meal 😂😂😂
Cheese with fresh bread some salad and wine. Perfection.
French school meals are another level.
You also know how to make cheese.
@John Smith I love French cheeses, but I think people are mean to British cheeses just because most of them are hard. But you can get a perfectly fine mature cheddar very reasonably which can be used to cook all sorts of food. That said at the cost of the primary meals served at our local school real cheese wasn't featuring heavily.
@Heather S - The difference is, the French (and British too - 🇬🇧), KNOW how to make cheese... Unfortunately, what Americans consider 'cheese' is, in the main, a processed, industrial version full of additives, which bear no resemblance to the traditional actual 'real deal'!
As an example: 'American Cheese' (the generic version added to/used in most commercial food meals), contains 21% sodium (salt) versus E.G. Swiss Cheese 2% or a 'higher salt' content per volume of say, Cheddar Cheese, but still only 8%
Imagine ALL those meals that contain cheese (never mind all the foodstuffs it is added with, plus their 'salt' content) and that appeal to American kids: Pizza, pasta & sauce, cheeseburgers, dips, processed chicken and similar every day - WOW ! Not a healthy diet - SMH
I don't think I've ever been so grateful for the free Finnish school lunches than I am watching this video... I'm also so baffled by the amount of desserts, like, we would have a dessert like once a month on a special occasion??? having a dessert everyday seems so bonkers to me.
We always had a proper warm meal with a salad and you got to serve yourself rather than the food being preportioned, even in the first grades. My fave was definitely spinach pancakes (which are savoury) with lingonberry jam, usually with a greek salad.
The true Finnish school lunch icon, however, is the rye-based crispbread. No matter what the meal for the day was, there'd always be a mountain of crispbread waiting for you. Even on the days when the meal they served wasn't your favorite, every kid would just be munching away on crisp bread and arguing over which side of the bread you should butter (the holey side, obviously).
I think I need to go make myself a crispbread now.
Why would you butter the non holey side?? The butter all falls off!
@@lucie4185 obviously because that's the side with the crumbs and if you butter it there's less crumbs everywhere, which is nice cause i don't like crumbs in my salad.
Oh those school lunches ❤️. I went to a very small primary school in the 90's and we had our own cook who made the food from scratch. Even them spinach pancakes. Moving to the secondary school was shock with the half-ready made meals. Even if it still was very good. Took me full 3 years to get accustomed to the pancakes. Last week of primary school the cook would let the 6th graders decide the menu. One of my fondest school memories 😄.
Was very different to spend my senior year of school in New Zealand being forced to learn to pack a lunch every day. Couldn't fathom that the only warm meals I could get for lunch were pretty much cup-noodles or -soup from the kiosk or chips from the corner store outside school grounds.
Coming from Switzerland, eating at the school is such a weird concept. Here everyone is expected to go home. Schools do offer lunch but pay 40$ per luncn. In high school most go home. The students who stay at the school either bring their own lunch or just buy something in the super market. I once read a post on reddit from an american woman who thought it's strange that teenager aren't supervised.
I was just about to say what you already very elegantly put into words about Finnish school lunch food. I do feel like there has been a slight change in quality towards the better since I went to elementary school (gotta love those spinach pancakes tho). I worked in a school for a year not too long ago and had school lunch every day, and some dishes tasted better than I remember 🤔 Maybe a sign of becoming an adult and more tolerant haha
It's interesting to see Noah's take on British school dinners given how early in his education the healthier "Jamie Oliver" food was introduced. I'm a fair number of years older so remember things like sprinkle cakes and the deep fried and/or breaded meats very well (turkey drumsticks in a bread bun with ketchup were my favourite as a kid). Looks like we weren't far from the US in that regard, though I also recall a wider variety of food each and every day which doesn't seem to be the case across the pond (least not based on the examples above). We also got milk regularly in primary school, including getting it with a piece of fruit as an afternoon snack during the first few years of school (pretty sure that's still the case).
Certainly wouldn't have been happy if Jamie had triggered those changes when I was at school, but it was the right thing to do. Those "unhealthy" meals might not have done me much harm but I was also privileged in my home life and my parents engaged with knowing and judging what food I should eat - don't think everyone is that lucky, so school should be a safe environment to learn about and partake in a more varied and balanced diet. With that said, this also needs to be done in a way that isn't classist, and having a celebrity chef present it via a channel 4 reality TV show was probably not the way to achieve this!
Also: yeah, they're called "dinner ladies" over here, as demonstrated by the comedy show of the same name (but without the space).
Also also: I'm appaulled yet not all that surprised to find that pizza is classed as a vegetable still... it's a ridiculous country!
right noah is much younger , as a pre Jamie student i see how different its was.
I remember primer school in the early 1960’s.
Blackburn Lancashire, cotten town.
Milk at morning break was a gill.
Lunch (dinner) was always meat and veg, but Friday was fish. (hated Friday dinner)
In summer sometimes cold meat and salad with bread and butter.
Always a pudding was served, mostly good, crumble and custard, the best but semolina was rubbish.
72 now and still remember.
As someone from a country where school lunches is not a thing I am so amazed by both. My first primary school actually closed during lunch and we'd go back home to eat and then come back to school for a few more hours, how crazy is that 😅
same in my country!
Dutch? Same here and my secondary school was close to a fastfood restaurant, yet most of the kids would just bring their own bread with cheese.
My father looking at Dutch kids in the fifties saw that many got their first meal of the day in the evening. Those free meals for poor kids have a reason.
@@2adamast thats crazy wow
Until after ww2 that’s how it was here in the states. My grandmother and her sister walked home for lunch or to their grandmothers house. The school didn’t serve food. It all changed in the 50’s.
"there's no such thing as Jamie Oliver in the states" actually there was, he went over there and did a whole documentary about trying to get healthy food in schools like he did in the UK and he left crying... parents were literally throwing McDonalds over the gates to their kids so they could eat what they wanted....
Edit: the show was called Jamie's American Food Revolution
I remember this, it was hilarious but also sad really.
Loved that series, a real eye opener
Jamie Oliver was huge in Australia since Australia takes a lot from UK.
Left crying 😂 ffs I shouldn’t laugh but
I remember it vividly having just moved to the US in 06. It was so grim. I seem to recall Jamie repeating the pink slime experiment in the US and the kids still wanted to eat the nuggets awful.
I went to an elementary school in a pretty affluent neighborhood in Maryland (my neighborhood was surrounded by a bunch of rich people lol) and even there, our lunches were just awful. The hotdogs often had green spots on them lol and the square pizza was so greasy you could place a napkin on it and soak up the oil
My friend in Louisiana went to a school that was supposed to be really nice and for gifted kids (you could go for things like dance, theatre, guitar, etc.) but there were tons of fights and horrible food. One time there were maggots in the food and someone sprayed a whole can of Lysol on it then someone walked in and ate it not knowing what was going on while the teacher wasn’t looking
@@Atlas_Quin oh god, that sounds exactly like louisiana. what school was it?
@ noah It was LJ Alleman (I think I spelled it wrong) That school sucked
Fast Food Nation the book noted that McDonalds had higher standards that the US department of agriculture, so US schools can serve food in that the home of fast food wouldn't accept.
I went to school in a shitty part of Los Angeles and we had pretty good food. Chalupas, pizza, burritos, idk it was never bad really
As a person from Sheffield, I really feel represented. But I do have to add that in my school, there were a normal main, a halal version and a a vegetarian option which I think was usually jacket potato.
thats cool that you had a halal option! we always had a meat option and a veggie option and jacket potato
@@Soph_252 yeah, it's not like Muslims can't eat meat at all, they just can't eat certain meats
what's a jacket potato?
@mechengr1731 A jacket potatoe is an oven-baked potatoe with usually beans and cheese, but you can have it with tuna mayo as well along with other toppings but those 2 are what we had in our school.
@@areebarehman3919same!! Sheffield primary dinners were actually decent, at least for me. Actually better than the secondary school food. Love how I still remember the roast dinner was on Wednesdays and then of course Friday fish and chips. Gettin emotional now :(
When I was at school in the late 40s-early 50s, the three schools were together on the same site. Couldn't really complain about the meals as first my grandmother and then my mother were head cooks.
I have a cookbook from those days, great concentration was placed on the balanced nutritional value, protein, vitamins, etc, of the meals.
What country?
@@gigglesmurf2004 .
UK. The school was a group of infants, juniors and seniors, as they were known back then. The canteen served all of them.
When i was young in England we had delicious food. Meat, potatoes and greens with delicious gravies and sauces. The puddings were lovely too. I always remember the cook rapping on the table with a metal spoon to shout "Who wants seconds'
The greens at my school were cooked almost to mush, mashed potatoes were invariably grey (roast were okay) and the liver still gives me nightmares. Elasticated, needed whittling around the massive vein running through it. Bacon had bone in it.
Spam fritters, a sponge of grease.
Found a big hairy caterpillar in my salad once, and no, it wasn't extra protein.
Most desserts okay, apart from whatever the sauce was they used on the ginger pudding, that was just nasty.
@@paulqueripel3493- Sadly, you obviously had bad COOKS at your school, to dish up what you describe, every day..? You can't account for being a bad cook - SMH!
@@stewedfishproductions7959 We didn't actually have cooks at the school, just people who dished it up. No kitchen, so everything was made at the nearest secondary school and transferred over.
@@paulqueripel3493 That's so sad the best part of school life for me was always the dinner and you better believe when I had the chance to join my daughter at her school for their child/parent dinners I was the first in line.
@@paulqueripel3493 .
I have a UK school cookbook from 1947. It states that green vegetables and potatoes should be served as soon as possible after cooking so as to preserve vitamin C.
Cabbage should be cooked using as little water as possible, the leaves being added, starting with the outer leaves first and cooked for 20 minutes.
Apple crumble with custard were the best! Also chocolate cupcakes were amazing, until they decided that it was too unhealthy 😭😭. The cupcakes were such a big deal that for the leavers last day we got these cupcakes specially made for us.
I'm 33 and from the UK, so pre Turkey Twizzler era (yes I remember eating this in school!) the sprinkle cake was amazing!! I still get this from bakeries now to re-live the school dinner memories!
We had potato smiles and beans and were always given an option and one was always veggie friendly even in the 90s!
we also had chocolate cake with chocolate custard (lumpy but yummy!) and we called them Dinner Ladies and not Lunch Ladies as we had school dinners not lunches!
We never had a salad bar that sounds mega fancy to me, lunchboxes were also restricted in later years so you couldn't have a sandwich, crisps, chocolate and a fizzy drink, you had to have at least one piece of fruit or veg and if you didn't have that in your lunchbox your parents would get a letter from the school to tell them about this rule.
Capri sun was what the cool kids had but wasn't an everyday thing, usually reserved for school trips along with lunchables and dairylea dunkers!!
i’m swedish and in every school i’ve ever gone to our lunches were served buffét-style. we had massive sallad bars and 3 main courses to choose from (with one of the options being vegetarian). i’m just now realising how spoilt we were.
Sometimes I didn't feel like eating the proper lunch so I just went to the salad part and filled my plate with grated carrots and beansprouts. They were delicious.
And you can’t forget the flat bread and butter
I went to a really small primary school with less than 100 pupils, so I feel like our school meals were pretty good as they were able to cook us better quality stuff. My absolute favourite was around Easter when we got lamb, mixed veg and mint sauce. It was SO good
Grew up in the 70s. We had "lunch ladies" who actually cooked hot food and much of it was from scratch. Main course, side dish, veggies, salad, bread, dessert and milk. The school lunches in our run of the mill small town in Northern California rocked. I can still remember some of my favorites to this day. I feel sorry for kids now with the crap they feed them.
Grew up in the 80s here and I enjoyed school lunch because it was all made from scratch un house.
I was so disappointed in the slop my kids were served.
the two schools I went to in Vermont, we had lunch ladies aka some parents of the students cook the food.
US here, I grew up in Fresno California (suburbs surrounded by rural farms, mainly grapes). I was born in 92 so started school around 97. In elementary school our cafeteria also had a stage so it was where the school plays and music shows would be but it was not a gymnasium. We have good weather year round so we played outside. There were maybe 5ish rainy days a year where we had to stay in the cafeteria for recess.
I remember having a choice between 3 main dishes for lunch and there were always a few sides. The only mains I remember were pizza (choice of cheese or pepperoni) & it was cut in a square and a deli sandwich. But in November they would serve a delicious thanksgiving meal once a week that had turkey, mashed potato’s and gravy, & a roll. That was the best lunch all year.
Sides included real fruit like banana or apple, frozen fruit cup so literally just diced fruit in water but frozen, veggies like peas/ carrots or something to match the main dish like dinner rolls.
I honestly don't remember much about school lunches from elementary school but I definitely remember there being a salad option, and I grew up in a small town in south Texas. By about middle school (5-6) grade we had a little more options to choose from, and by Jr. High and High School we had a food court so there was a stand where they sold corndogs/tacos/burritos, a soup and salad bar, and the usual lunch line. Jrs and Seniors were allowed to go off campus for lunch and there were quite a few fast food places and restaurants within walking distance of the school.
My daughter goes to a public school in Spain, I wish I could show you her weekly menu because the level of healthiness and yumminess is absolutely crazy and unbelievable
Same here, only I teach, in a small school, in an area where seafood is abundant. Comida casera … it is often some kind of shellfish, and you can smell it all over the school when they’re cooking in the school kitchen. (Too bad I don’t get to eat any!)
Yes, it is very healthy. I also like that they give recommendations for parents, what to cook for dinner (at least here, in Catalonia).
I never knew about pizza being classified as a vegetable in schools in the USA 🍕🥦🤷🤣
😂 Ikr, that's pretty bizarre
well I'm not at this point. Companies make lots money off peddling this slop to school districts here. My mom use to be a lunch lady back in the late 80's and early 90's and remembers when the food started changing here. The schools use to have lunch ladies that actually cooked real food; cooked trays of roasted chicken, real potatoes for mashed (now it's instant boxed), and various veggies. But the schools got pitched they could save money buying premade foods that anyone with little or no training to heat up so you needed less staff at a lower skill level so less pay. Then they started getting contracts signed with these premade food companies and it was all down hill from there. Most these companies are the same that supply prison cafeterias in a lot of areas.
@@roguechevelle That was one of Jamie Olivers arguments here the government was spending less money on children's food than they were on prisoners. it was probable heading in the same direction until that point.
Too bad it isn't true, it's apparently just a misunderstanding of the discussion in congress of how much tomato paste counts as a serving of vegetables.
ketchup is a smoothie
You should look at the school lunches served in France, the posted menus look very good
In the early '70's (yes I am that old) there was milk for primary but it was stopped due to Thatcher removing it. My favourite school dinner was hot cheese pie, chips and peas..
Yeah those menus were just like my uk primary school, we had three mains : meat (except on Mondays which were meat free), vegetarian and a jacket potato option every day. The American ones seemed a lot more similar to what my secondary school offered us where it would just be like a chicken burger or other junk food and drinks with no required fruit or veg and every element: dessert or drink was paid for separately with money our parents gave us online that was linked to a thumb print scanner
I hated those damn thumb scanners! We had to bring in money though, youd put it on your account by scanning to log in to one of the thumb scanners in the corridors, then just feeding the money in. At lunch you'd pay by scanning your thumb at the till :)
Liked this before I even started watching, with this combo you just know it's going to be hilarious. But this is even better! I mean, pizza's a vegetable?! I seriously wonder how any American kids it make it through their childhood alive 🤣
90s' Baby here that went through school in Texas - I lived in a middle-class to upper-middle class neighborhood. Primary through high school, the schools I attended had lunch ladies that prepared the lunches; can't confirm if all or any made the food on-site, though, because I always packed my own meals. However, there were always a selection of options from what I can remember my friends telling me about. My schools all had Magnet programs and pre-school day classes for the extra-dedicated students, so there were breakfasts available as well.
I went to public school for most of elementary (K-4th). I remember there was always 2 entre options + a snack (chips/fruit leather/etc) + a fruit (usually apples). I only remember that we had those nasty pizza squares. My most prominent memory was not having enough money to pay for it one day so they came and took my food away and I cried in a corner and my classmates donated their snack items so I could eat. Eventually I got placed on the Free Lunch program for low income students.
I went to a private middle school where there was no cafeteria - everyone brought their own sack lunch.
I went to private high school and the cafeteria was really nice but expensive. I was on the Lunch Voucher program for low income students so I got $5/day to spend in the cafeteria. But $5 didnt cover most meals (usually $8-$11) so I would pack lunch Tuesday and Thursday and use my lunch vouchers Monday/Wednesday/Friday. I usually did sandwich + soup or sandwich + salad. There was a really good pesto chickn ciabata sandwich that was my go to fav. But they always offered 2-3 entre choices, a salad bar, a pasta bar, and a fruit bar. I had $70 left on my voucher account at the end of high school and they actually paid thay out to me when I graduated which was a pleasant surprise.
"entrée" in the rest of the world means a starter lol
When I lived in the UK, school meals were pretty good.
what did you guys have in general?
They were good until Jamie Oliver fucked it up
@@thecunninlynguist In high school (in Canning Town, E16), our meals were prepared and cooked onsite using raw ingredients brought in daily. It varied, but always fish (baked or fried) on Fridays, in deference to Catholic tradition back then. It was all pretty good ... at about 1/6d per day! lol
@@thecunninlynguist It was always cooked onsite and it was always good. We had a Spanish lady who used to cook a chicken dish once a week and everybody loved it. It was always served with white rice and any side vegetable that they had that day. The meals were just normal healthy meals like roast or stewed meat or fish with potatoes, root veg, rice or pasta. We sometimes had savoury pies. The puddings were delicious everyday. Easter was special so always lamb.Fridays was always fish.
Aussie here. None of the schools I went to had school lunches. Some of them had a canteen that would be open once or twice a week. You would write what you wanted for lunch from the canteen on a brown paper bag like hot dogs or sausage rolls or pies and you would put the money in the bag and hand it in to the teacher in the morning and the canteen ladies would cook it and deliver to classrooms at lunchtime. Other canteens only had snacks and some lollies and a few different drinks to choose from and you would take your money at lunchtime and go and buy what you wanted but you got a packed lunch from home everyday. Even when you got lunch from the canteen because it was only something hot and a drink you would still get a packed lunch with fruit and a snack in it.
Yep! and we didn't have lunch halls, we all ate at our desks in our classroom for morning tea and lunch then went out to play.. at least at my school. Also no nuts were allowed!
Same. American movie scenes with school cafeterias/lunch trays always seemed surreal to me. My family rarely ordered anything from the canteen so it was kind of exciting when I had a paper bag order to hand in! Halfway through my schooling they tried to make the canteen slightly healthier and got rid of the sausage rolls etc and made more chicken and salad wrap type things. Got rid of the lollies too, but left us some ice cream options.
Way back when I was in grades 1-2 in the early 1960s, we had real home-style food cooked by farmer wives in Illinois and we went through a serving line. Nothing was prepackaged. Then when we moved to Missouri in 1968, they had bland "institutional" food.
Nowadays, in some places, peanut butter sandwiches are banned in schools (can't bring one from home) because some kid might flick a bit of PB on a kid who has an allergy to peanuts.
33 year old Brit here. We had free milk bottles every break time untill around 1995 (thanks Maggy Thatcher) dinners were great, Fondley remember curry rice and chips, sponge cake and pink custard!!! Dinners now are great, my son's primary offered a two week rotating menu with a huge range of foods way better than we ever got! Lots of veggie and fish options, hot and cold snacks/sandwich/wraps!
You can't blame Maggie if it was removed in the 90s, she was gone by then.
Thatcher the milk snatcher was 1971. I remember getting (tiny) bottles of milk then, unfortunately in summer they'd gone off by the time we were given them.
I remember getting bottles then it was cartons. It was sometimes placed on the radiator so it became warm!
The fish on a Friday is an old Christian tradition - abstaining from eating the meat of warm blooded mammals for some reason or other. It’s more significant in church schools but a lot of other non-church schools still do fish Friday menus in the UK
The town where I went to high school was majority Catholic, so school lunch on Friday was either breaded fish or grilled cheese with tomato soup. And you could get double portions of the leftovers on Monday. The sandwiches were made with government cheese, so you got that lovely combination of substance and meltiness. I can still close my eyes and taste the reheated goodness.
In my elementary school in the Philadelphia area, we had multiple options for the entree, but you had to tell your teacher what you wanted in the morning so they would have it ready for you at lunch. If you missed the lunch order, you got whatever was left over. Also, of course, we had cheesesteaks on the menu regularly. I never had one, but they looked gross.
I went to school in Scotland, we got milk every day at break time in primary school until about P4/5 and we had to option to get milk with lunch in both primary and high school. I don't think having milk with meals is that uncommon here.
Yeah, I think it's less of UK schools not having milk as there being MANY UK citizens that I've seen with an aversion to drinking milk. To my American milk drinking self, it can sometimes be odd how grossed out some Brits can be about milk.
In summer the milk was replaced by orange squash in the same kind of bottles.
It was very common to get milk until the 70's, then Margaret Thatcher the Milk Snatcher took them away while education minister. They brought them back eventually, but must have been after I was there. Left primary school in 1997. I remember turkey twizzlers but aside from that and turkey dinosaurs I don't remember lunches being much different to home cooked meals.
Ok so i went to a British primary and honestly the food was top notch.
We had a menu pretty similar to the ones in the video
We had three options
A meat option
B Veggie option
C Jacket potato with a topping
Then there was alway vegetables or bread or soup (in the winter)
And a pudding
And omg it was amazing
It was my fave part of school ngl
My kids are in elementary school in US in one of the 10 largest districts in the country. Food choices for them are very different to the food options I had as a kid in school in the late 80's and much of the 90's. Most food (save for Thursday - hamburger or chicken burger and the bi-monthly pizza days) was slop. Or at least it seemed so to kids. Much of it was frozen or canned, though the lovely cafeteria ladies made fresh bread and rolls and rice. All fruits and veg were canned except for the apples. Breakfasts were a lot better, but it was always paid. If you didn't have money, you got 1 free meal, and then if you forgot/lost/didn't have lunch money again that week, you got a cheese sandwich (two slices of bread and slice of american cheese) and a wizened apple. Then middle school was totally different and I mostly subsisted on Little Debbie snacks and/or pizza purchased at school.
My kids though - while a lot of the menu looks like what was read, the balance and choices are much broader and the quality of food is vastly improved. Their district offers a main and an alternative and have to offer meal accommodations for religious or allergen issues (so there are separate halal or allergen-free options that aren't publicized). There is always a fresh fruit and fresh veg option, in addition to other frozen or canned options. The meals must meet nutritional standards and that includes caps on sodium and sugar content. They also ask the kids what options they want to reduce food waste. My daughter has occasionally doubled up on fruit/veg and skipped the main or had the main but brought her own veggie options.
The bigger deal was that until this year, breakfast and lunch were provided free to all students because the district was part of an expanded test case for the USDA and lunch programs. Congress didn't provide funding to continue the program (which was available nation wide to all schools during the pandemic) and it's a huge mistake. The district has reallocated resources to make all but 9 schools free to all, but those 9 schools will no longer be free to all unless you meet poverty qualifications. There are reduced cost meals, but the schools are too affluent per current guidelines so they have to do individual waivers. The district learned over the 5 year experiment that they saved enormous amounts of time and money not having to process all the waiver requests and forms and kids performed better because they were getting fed. There was no stigma around who had free or reduced lunch, because it was just available freely to everyone. My son won't eat it (he only eats a few things because of sensory issues), but my daughter looks forward to 75% of the school menus.
I always had packed lunch as I didn’t like any of the food but I remember they would keep changing their like chef company and it would be chaos everytime as it just got progressively worse. There’s also all of the beetroot brownies (probably the secret brownie in the video) also I would call the dinner ladies!
I experienced the tipping point of pre and post the Jamie Olivering. It was one of the most miserable and borderline traumatic things to ever happen at primary school.
Sorry, Tipping point, you don't have to Tip at school?🤔😊
He meant well and he wasn't wrong, the processed crap we were feeding children was horrendous. It wasn't really his fault school authorities fucked it up.
@@mothturtle7897 true enough, he was just the poster boy. That being said, his recent "eton mess" campaign was completely tone deaf and would have ended up making poor families who live on cheap food both penniless AND hungry. Jamie Oliver tries to portray the food and obesity crisis in the uk as a 1 sided issue when in fact its extremely complex issue that goes much deeper than 'people should eat healthier'.
Growing up in Wales 🏴 at my primary school we had a Dinner Lady who cooked our meals every day from fresh, it was a very small school with a big class and little class, we had delicious home cooked meals every day and cold cut’s with salad in the warmer weather.
I loved my dinner lady and in her spare time she also made cloth dolls in beautiful dresses and hats. A genuine gem of a woman too.
I'm British and 72. When I went to school, all children had a small bottle of milk every day. Later, milk was only given to primary school children. Then Margaret Thatcher became Minister of Education and said that parents could buy milk for children themselves so it was scrapped. She became known as Maggie Thatcher, milk snatcher! Many of the children still voted for her as Prime Minister about 15 years later! To eat, we had good square meals, meat, potatoes, veg except on Fridays when we had fish of some kind, or cheese pie, my favourite! The geography teacher and used to queue for thirds! The puddings could often be stodgy, like Spotted Dick and custard, although I enjoyed the rice and semolina. We had the sort of meals we would eat at home. No chips and pizza was unheard-of. As for turkey twizzles, your video is the first time I've ever seen them.
Can't remember much of my pre-Jamie primary school meals but I'm pretty sure it was still all cooked fresh at least.
The one highlight I absolutely remember though is Apple Crumble with Custard. Instant custard is still a guilty pleasure of mine that the (by all means better and tastier) properly made stuff can't match.
I had a couple of years of pre-Jamie school meals, fond memories of the instant custard (including pink custard and chocolate custard), cornflake tart, ginger cake with toffee sauce, chocolate concrete...
Still love cake and custard and apple crumble, classic.
Oh dear I’m old enough to remember when we used to get free milk at morning break in the U.K., until Mrs. Thatcher took it away. One of her nicknames was “Mrs Thatcher Milk Snatcher”.
Free school milk was stopped at secondary schools in the late1960s, I think it was Shirley Williams who was the minister. As I recall Margaret Thatcher opposed the move in the 70s but was overuled by Ted Heath.
@@danielclitheroe1869 It was ended in Secondary Schools in the 1960s by Shirley Williams and in Infants schools in the 1970s by Mrs. Thatcher.
I happen to work in an elementary school kitchen in northern Vermont. School menus vary widely. A lunch has to have a vegetable, fruit, whole grain, protein and milk. The school I work at has a salad bar that has to have fruit, vegetables, and protein options. Also we offer a sandwich if you don’t want the hot lunch options. And peanut butter and jelly is not allowed due to sugar content and allergies. I serve things like shepherds pie, fish and chips, grilled cheese and tomato soup, pulled pork, and of course pizza(comes with a salad).
I'm 37 and remember the primary school dinners being proper hearty healthy meals. That's why I took sandwiches (I was very picky!). Dinners kids ate in the year 6 classroom next to the kitchen. Everyone else ate in their classrooms.
High school dinners were totally different as there was always pizza/sausage rolls/chips to choose from, plus one proper meal option. And fizzy drinks, which weren't available at primary school (just water I think).
Noah :) I absolutely love him and I'm happy to see him here
When I was at school, a long time ago, every kid had a little bottle of milk that was warm as it had been sitting about. I became a tea girl just so I didn’t have to drink it and made the teachers tea instead and to this day, I still can’t drink milk
I remember those ... A crate of little glass bottles was delivered every morning, and was usually warm by 10.30 when we drank them.
One lucky kid got to poke the foil tops with a knitting needle and put the straws in, everyone wanted that job for some reason. Any excuse to get out of work to stab things for a few minutes, I suppose.
But the little bottles of milk came with the brilliance that was 'skewer monitor' and 'straw monitor.' The greatest jobs in the world.
I hated warm milk at school when the milk was put against radiators in Winter. I stopped drinking milk on it's own forever .
warm milk has made be hate drinking milk unless it flavoured with something and I can't stand full cream milk if I have to drink milk it has to be ice cold skimmed or semi skimmed. I hated those little bottles the thought of them makes me gag.
Years ago, we had this in Germany too. Fortunately for us the milk was always cold, they really made you hate it xD
I don't really remember my Primary School meals anymore, but I'm certain there were Smiley Faces. I started High School in 2003 though, so before Jamie took everything away and it was certainly not the healthiest. You could buy bottles of pop, packets of crisps and chocolate bars. When all that got removed, the school started having issues with students sneaking off site to go the local shops.
Before Jamie, the canteen had 3 serving areas. The main one did your regular meals, but then the other 2 were hatches that did things like pizza and burgers. After Jamie, the variety of burgers and fast food was massively reduced and increased in price. A pasta bar was started, with a small being 30p and large 50p and you could get toppings like cheese, beans, tuna/mayo and they had jacket potato as well.... Unfortunately, that proved far too successful and by the time I left, the small was £1.50 and large at £1.80.
Man, I remember my elementary school lunches being mostly steamed except for the pizza. There was always an entree, a fruit, and a milk (white or chocolate). If there was a vegetable, I don't remember having it. I mostly remembered eating a lot of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, grilled cheese, fish sandwiches with the cheese under the breading, half frozen peaches in syrup, and two types of pizza (french bread or my favorite, circular with three pepperonis on top). Those ice cream cups were saved for special events and they were just as likely to serve lemon Italian ices instead.
As they go through these menus, kids now and days got it way better with selections, lol. Grilled cheese? Chicken patty? Baked Zitti? Nachos? I recall getting stuff like Mac & Cheese, Pizza, Cheeseburger, Turkey & Gravy, sandwiches, and variations around those. Nothing too fancy
My primary school, in Bexley, London had 4 lunch options.
You chose at the beginning of the day, and were given a coloured rubber bracelet to show what meal you chose.
Red- A meat dish (changes daily)
Green- A vegetarian dish (changes daily)
Yellow- A pasta dish (changes daily)
Blue- jacket potatoes with stuff from salad bar
There were also 2 (I think) desserts to choose from, fruit or an unhealthier thing (cake, ice cream, etc),
Also we had two lunch rooms. One was the canteen with the kitchen, and one was the hall which is where people ate their packed lunches
oh what that sounds so cool? probably lessens waste as well
You have brought back memories of me worrying about loosing my lunch bracelet at break time. Always paranoid I'd lose it running around with my friends
One thing I loved during school dinners was the Cheese Flan, chips and beans! Then cake amd custard for dessert 😁
British school lunches in primary school were probably the best meals I ever ate tbh. You can tell they were made fresh and at my school, we had a lot of options. we had two hot meals to choose from or we could make a sandwich (or a wrap, or a bun) with whatever stuff we want inside. We had desserts to choose from as well ( as well as yoghurt and jellies). It was probably the best part of school for me LOL
Food in American schools are typically made in a facility off of school grounds, one that usually services a half dozen schools or more, and then the food is shipped to the school and completed by the school cooks.
Now, since I went to schools in the Midwest of America, I'll provide some meals that clearly Evan's school didn't really do. One thing that is super common is chili with a frosted cinnamon roll, and that was often a favorite. Another thing could be turkey gravy over either an American biscuit (No! American biscuits are NOT scones) or over mashed potatoes. However, those potatoes always had a weird texture and opaque color that reminded me of hair gel. We would also frequently get tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich, tacos with a choice of hard or soft shells, crispitos with nacho cheese (a crispito was basically a narrow, crispy baked burrito), the ever classic sloppy joe, and of course the barbeque rib patty.
However, when I went to school at a very large school up in Bemidji Minnesota, the lunch there was VERY elaborate. There were four different lunch lines, one for pizza every day, one for hot sandwiches, the salad bar and the fourth being a meal that changed daily with the typical school lunch menu. Needless to say, I ate a LOT of pizza the couple years I went to that school.
As far as health goes, yeah, the food in the US is VERY unhealthy. When I graduated high school, all I did to change my lifestyle was stop eating school lunches, and I lost 40 pounds. LOTS of fat and sugar.
Your first statement kinda applies to some UK schools as well, or maybe just Northern Ireland, but the way it worked in my town was that there was a large primary school, then 2 smaller primary schools, and the bigger primary school made all the food for the 3 schools, then shipped the cooked food to the other schools because the schools just weren't big enough to have their own kitchens or lunch hall.
@@simongreer6179 While that's similar, think bigger. In America most school lunches are provided by food distributors that send big tins of highly preserved 'food' for school cooks to prepare and serve.
My school in rural Texas was small, so the food was actually made on site in the kitchen, but even then, it wouldn't be anything like Noah would recognize as food.
@@Jackadoor That is the same thing in the UK as well. In Northern Ireland, the EA gets contracts with a lot of catering services to provide food for the schools.
My step dad works in a kitchen that serves at least 6 schools. It's fresh meals everyday (and has to be approuved by a dietetician for the healthyness) and also part organic. It's not the best tasting meals, but at least it's balanced. The way it's organized in the US seems to be an excuse for making more money =/
Back when I was in elementary school here in the US, late 60s, cafeteria food was abysmal. Same was true for high school in the 70s. The food you listed for either country is a huge step up.
Really, I'm from Vermont, we had fresh made school lunches in both Elementary school and High School. my fave meal for Elementary school was a fresh cooked turkey, real mashed potatoes and steamed vegetables, , my fave HS meal was fresh baked rolls with baked ham , baked potatoes and steamed Vegetables , in both schools the mothers of some of the students did all the cooking.
@@marydavis5234 Definitely not in Southern California back when I was in school.
Fellow Jerseyite here, Evan. A much older one at that. Our primary school, or as we call 'em in NJ, elementary school, lunches were all cooked from scratch by the lunch ladies. Things like chicken a la king; creamed chicken on rice with peas; sloppy Joes; burgers; pizza slices; peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; pasta and tomato sauce; chop suey; hot dogs; ice cream cups, as you described; little pint cartons of milk, each with a drawing and mini-bio of a different US president. All relatively balanced meals, usually with a protein, carb, and veg. I think lunch cost 25 cents. Yes, I'm that old. I enjoyed remembering the school lunches I had as I watched the video. Mmm...I could go for a plate of creamed chicken on rice with peas, right now. 👨🍳
I'm from the UK (state school) and we had a wrap bar. You had lettuce in the bottom and then there were three main things you could get in it (I can only think of chicken tikka rn) and then like whatever sauce. There were these pre packaged cookies that you could buy and they were SO GOOD, and it was like a school tragedy when they stopped selling them in like year 8 lmao
We used to have chocolate cake with mint custard as one of our desserts at school. Ah the memories 😛
I love when Noah comes to visit the channel 🥰 more please!
Went to primary school during the 1970's in the UK . We still had steak and kidney pie, roast lamb, chicken hot pot , mashed swede, prunes and custard, and rice pudding with rosehip syrup in those days! My own kids grew up in the turkey twizzler era and would have had non of that. ( I gave them a packed lunch most of the time.) Now the school menu has gone multi cultural with healthy recipes taken from around the world, like kormas, lasagnas, and mexican burritos with plenty of salads. Also, I noticed that boiled, (or rather now steamed,) cabbage is back again!
I remember there were always 2 options in primary school *or* you could choose to have a tuna, cheese or ham baguette (I always chose the tuna baguette), but on Fridays it was Spotty Bag Day so you couldn't have baguettes but you were allowed to have chicken nuggets with chips or a hot dog with chips (which was of course served in a spotty bag)! There was also jacket potato which was an option every day if I remember correctly! I think it had beans and cheese on it!
Dessert was AMAZING! I can remember desserts the little tub of ice cream or my absolute favourite; sticky toffee pudding! I think we only got sticky toffee pudding on spotty bag day, but I loved it so much - you'd choose if you wanted it with or without custard (I always had it without)! OH tray bakes too, those tray bake cakes we'd have them quite often, yet again super yummy! AND BROWNES THEY WERE SO GOOOODDD, OH OH AND JELLY (USUALLY SERVED WITH ICE CREAM BUT I THINK THEY SERVED IT ON THE BROWNIES AS WELL SOMETIMES)
As for drinks, I definitely remember you could have milk, but it was specifically green milk (semi-skimmed) and I was upset when I found out because I said I only liked blue milk (full fat) lmao - You most likely would've been able to get water if you wanted it though!
I was mainly packed lunch though up until like year 6 as my friends started being school dinners so I had to if I didn't want to be sat alone (people eating school dinners aren't allowed to sit next to those with packed lunch, we tried to sneak to the others table before but we got shouted at a few times so we stopped lol)!
My packed lunch always consisted of a sandwich, chocolate bar, frube, cheese and crisps, also you had to eat your sandwich first and your crisps last, if you got caught eating your crisps before you chocolate or sandwich after your frube, etc. you'd get yelled at so I still eat in the order of sandwich then crisps ahgsdahgd
Just remembered another thing; the salad bar we had, there was cheese and me and my friend were little cheese addicts so no matter what we were eating we would go up to it and just fill our box with cheese to just eat on its own 😭
I'm a little older than Noah but when I was in reception I remember refusing the compulsory little carton of milk at breaktime. Took another 17 years to discover I was lactose intolerant 🙃
I'm looking forward the Secondary video. I went to a black Christian schoo in London and we weren't allowed meat on school grounds, but all the cooks were afro/caribbean so I know a lot of our food was very different from the average.
Was it all Ital then, for the lack of meat?
@@kawaiilotus No, nit quite. Our school definitely didn't gave the budget to adhere to an Ital diet 😅 It was a lot of rice/pasta with fake meat and some British-fied "Caribbean" dishes
Ditto although the lunches didn't stand out enough for me to remember if they had meat, but they we're pretty good. My fave was the veggie hotdogs still don't like meat ones till this day.
School dinners in France (private school) in the late 70's were great. 3-5 courses, always baguettes, just very cool!
I went to school decades ago and our school meals were delicious. All cooked on the premises from scratch,, my favourite was 'cheese flan' (a British version of Quiche) with homemade chutney with no lumps in it. To this day I can't abide Branston pickle and all the other chunky chutneys. We also used to have this amazing almond tart (an adaption of Bakewell Tart) with this delicious white almondy custard sauce.
It's so cool to see you both in a video again..feels like it's been ages
Lol im pre Jamie Oliver time and our lunches, although mostly healthy were not good quality. Nothing was made fresh really, it was just heated. Packed lunches were not policed like they are now (now you cannot take pop/energy drinks/juice, crisps, chocolate etc). Some schools police this really strictly and will remove these items to stop children eating them.
My son is now 9 and has the most amazing lunches with roast dinners, curries, mexican, chinese, etc with access to salad and a bread roll each day. He has 1 meat, 1 vegetarian, jacket potato or sandwich option at all times all for £2.29 a day! - only water is allowed at dinner times to drink
Food like that would never exist in a school in the US unless it was a very rich school district or one of those schools where rich people pay stupid amounts of money to send a minor to school.
damn that all sounds so fancy compared us meals😅my school menu was fairly similar to evans. i can’t imagine having real actual hot food for school lunch
'Pizza is vegetable'. I like Noah's expression so much in response to that because that's that's pretty much my expression too! Unbelievable....
Our room was the same too... Assembly, lunch, P.E., school shows, music lessons.... Had the fold out wooden and metal climbing frame things on the wall 🤦🏼♀️
I love Noah’s hair!
Even as a kid I'd prefer the London school menu. My parents gave me a very varied diet and I was always allowed fruit and vegetables. My aunt fed me a lot more freezer food and I really just didn't like it as much as homemade fajitas, curry, chilli, bolognese, Norwegian meatballs etc
I'm Canadian, started school in 1993, and there was no lunch program at all in my K-7 (ages 5-12) school at all. Once a month or so the parent association would arrange a "hot lunch" day where everyone got a hotdog, juice box, and a little bag of chips. Starting in grade 5 (age 10) you could volunteer for the rotating roster of crossing guards before or after school and the crossing guards were rewarded once every 2 months with McDonalds orders. I went to a grades 8-12 high school and the senior level "Chef Training" class cooked for the cafeteria, which was a bring your money and order something, first-come first-served deal. You pretty much had to skip out of your last period before lunch early if you wanted fries. I may have bought something twice in my whole 5 years.
Hi Evan,
I’m planning on moving to the UK as a soon to be dual US/UK citizen.
I use a mobility scooter for long trips because walking is painful on my joints due to cerebral palsy. I am also visually impaired and use a white cane/ long cane at night. Can you do a video comparing accessibility in the US and UK? I used to live there, but don’t remember how the accessibility was as I was growing up.
-Do restaurants have large print or braille menus?
-Do restaurant employees know sign language?
-Is public transport accessible for those of us with assistive mobility devices like scooters and wheelchairs? Buses, black cabs, the Tube, etc.
-Do bathrooms have grab bars, or even accessible stalls at all?
I cannot drive, so I would use my scooter, and rideshare like Uber when I move back. I do the same here in the US, too.
I know this is a video topic you haven’t covered, as those without disabilities don’t typically give thought into a topic such as this, so it usually gets either very little thought or zero thought by able bodied residents.
I’ve seen that only a few of the Tube stations are accessible, is that true? I found this out by searching UA-cam.
If you know anyone with mobility differences, please do a comparison video on this topic. It would help me out greatly.
Thanks.
Actually the UK McDonald's ingredients are very, very different from those in America. Same with ketchup and loads if things.
Let's play a game...which option is the list of ingredients for Maccas fries in the USA, UK and Aus?
Option 1: Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (Canola Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Natural Beef Flavor [Wheat and Milk Derivatives]*, Citric Acid [Preservative]), Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (Maintain Color), Salt.
Option 2: Potatoes, two kinds of oil, dextrose, and salt.
Option 3: Potato, canola oil, dextrose and mineral salt
1: America (based of the preservatives and the food colouring)
2: UK
3: Australia (numbers 2 & 3 are so similar it is hard to tell so they are guesses)
The reason the US ingredients list looks the way it does is that the US FDA requires every ingredient to be listed, and by its scientific name, no matter how small a quantity of it was in the food. McDonalds isn't as different as you want to believe around the world. The UK just doesn't have to list all the ingredients, for example, by law.
@@jwb52z9 Nope. Fact checked this one. Even know one of the farms that supplies the meat. Strictly governed by Defra. For a basic start, no growth hormones allowed. 🇺🇸 beef used in the US McDonald's have growth hormones from birth. 🇺🇸 laws allow factory farmed cattle practices which are illegal here. UK potatoes do not have to be 'rested' for weeks. The amount of icides used make the potatoes not fit for human consumption until airing is undertaken. I'm a UK family farm. Our corporate farms are pushing short term gain for shareholders. Managed to get an icide back in use that is known to be highly toxic to bees.
@@09dinodino34 You are correct, nicely done.
I’m from the pre-Jamie Oliver era in the UK, and whilst we did occasionally have some questionable food, it was not a patch on the food the Americans provide in schools. I wouldn’t mind betting that prisoners of war get better food!
For some good viewing though, look up the original TV series that Jamie Oliver did looking into food in schools and you’ll get to see what it was really like 👍
I think prisons have to meet certain nutritional standards and they're just better funded in general because they turn a profit.
My school district gives sugar for breakfast and heavy starch for lunch. Hyper in the a.m. and dead asleep in the p.m.
When I was school, a thousand years ago, elementary school had no school provided lunch. You either brown bagged it or walk home. Cooked lunches started in middle school (7th) grade. We had a meat, veg, fruit, and dessert. Beverage was white milk or fruit juice. You could brown bag. High school was cooked meals or brown bags.
I started primary around 91 I think. Our school never had turkey twizzlers but my mum use to buy them and I loved them omg that flavouring I've never forgiven jamie!
From what I remember my school dinner it would of been mash, meat gravy, veg and sponge and custard. Lasagne, chips, veg and ice cream, those sort of dinners, always a meat, carb, veg and pudding. When I got older they opened a sandwich bar I think that you could pick and maybe soup at it too.
sausage and mash with gravy and pee's was my favourite meal in school.
You drank pee lol
@@evan lmfao my dumb ass spelling mistake, you know what... I'm not even going to edit my comment and fix my error... I need to go back to school.
I went to elementary in the state of Idaho in the US and my lunch experience was extremely different than Evans. We always had multiple protein options, veggies and fruits and we had a salad bar area and yes milk options as well. This was Aug 95' - May 02', when I went to elementary.
Very interesting though, especially the difference in my country and the UK. 🙂
In my primary school in Ireland, which was very small, we all brought in our own packed lunch & we usually ate it outside in the playground in dry weather or at our desks on rainy days. Our school was so small it only had two main classrooms that had infants up to 6/7 year olds in one room & 7/8 yr olds up to 10/11 year olds in the other room. Each row of desks represented a different class/year group. One teacher in each room & the head teacher was the one teaching the older ones. We were taught separately, so whilst she was instructing one lot, the rest would be getting on with their tasks that were set. Singing lessons were done all together though. I think the whole school only had 60 pupils or thereabouts. 30 in each room. So it was tiny! The school even had a cute name. It was called Flower Hill primary school.
55yo from the UK. Our school dinners were cooked on the premises. You didn't get a choice but you were allowed to say "lot" or "little" you were not allowed to refuse anything and it was a proper "home cooked" meal with a pudding. Meat, veg, potatoes, gravy or shepards pie things like that. Always fish and chips with a rice pudding on a Friday!
The early days of Jamie Oliver lunches were dark times. I’m a trainee teacher now and things have got much better, especially with the wider availability of free school lunches. Schools weren’t equipped for the sudden change towards healthier food and it took a few years for things to get better which is why I almost never had school lunches as a kid, because I was ridiculously fussy and even if the meal on offer was something I’d eat at home it usually wasn’t cooked very well and it would then put me off having it again at home.
Pretty much every kid in my class had a packed lunch, and they almost all followed the same formula that I still pack sometimes as an adult because in my brain it’s what a packed lunch should include. It was a sandwich (ham, cheese or similar if your parents made it, chocolate spread or jam if you did), a flapjack or cereal bar, bit of fruit, a yogurt, lunchbox chocolate bar and maybe a bag of crisps. There was some variation on that, I knew one girl who got jelly pots instead of yogurt, but that was pretty much the standard.