Quantity of free lunches for ‘hungry high schoolers’ sparks outrage: 'Took me 3 bites to finish that'

In communities and areas where people face constant economic hardships, many schools provide some relief to struggling families by offering kids free meals. Even though this is a commendable solution, the actual implementation of such free meal schemes seems to have one key problem. u/Thebiggestbot22 shared a post highlighting how such free meals had a surprisingly low amount of food. The post titled: "My school thinks this fills up hungry high schoolers," has gone viral with 51K upvotes and over 6.7K comments on the site.

The student shared an image of the small meal, which contains some mac and cheese with some fries, carrots and chocolate milk. It is evident from the photo that the meal is too small and will not suffice for most students, who will be very hungry after attending classes for the first half of the day. They wrote in the caption, "So lunches are free for schools in my city and surrounding cities. Ever since lunches have been made free, the quantity (and quality) has decreased significantly."

They further shared how it only took them a mere 3 bites to finish the mac and cheese. If students wanted to get anything more to alleviate their hunger, it would cost them more money. An extra entree was a costly $3 or $4. People who saw the post were appalled at the amount of food being served and shared their thoughts about it in the comment section. u/WillJoseph06 pointed out, "That mac and cheese looks like a child's school project gone wrong. Literally looks like glue."

u/SubKreature shared, "When I taught in Japan, they were stuffing like 1,000 calories down those kids every day and it was clean food prepared that morning." u/Ridiculousnessjunkie expressed, "It's nasty. We are supposed to be the most powerful country in the world. Why can't we act like it?" u/PandabearPuppy1951 said, "It looks sick to me. My dog wouldn't even like it. There's got to be some improvements there!! Put it on the news, they're good at getting change." 

The free meal scheme is extremely helpful to many students across the country by allowing them to remain healthy and get all the nutrients they need. However, the Waukesha School District board in Wisconsin decided to opt out of a federally funded program that would result in all students getting free meals irrespective of their family income. The school reasoned that they made the move to prevent the children from being "spoiled," according to The Washington Post.

The decision came to light after the initial hit of the COVID-19 pandemic. Joseph Como Jr, the president of the school board, stated that the move was part of a return to "normalization" at a meeting held on June 9. The national program provides free and discounted lunches solely to students who apply and qualify for federal assistance. Alternatively, federal authorities offer the Seamless Summer Option, which enables schools to offer meals in low-income areas during the summer. Currently, among Wisconsin's 408 school districts, only the Waukesha School District has declined this funding.