I remember in Slovakia it was alright, I come from a very rural area where the person behind the cafeteria was usually a local.

I moved to Poland years ago, and it seems to be the same here

Haven’t had US school food, so I can’t make a direct comparison, but given I heard ketchup counts as a vegetable, and the weird gloopy slime milk I’ve seen online, I imagine it’s a lot better here

For the free school lunch, usually we’d have random rotation of a starch (mashed potatoes, buckwheat, or rice usually), a salad (beetroot, bean, coleslaw, I don’t remember the others on rotation), meat (pork patties, patties stuffed with egg, chicken cutlet, fish patties), a soup (bean, cabbage, beetroot and some others), and a drink (usually tea, juice or kompot). For the paid lunch there were more varieties, and extra goodies like pastries

And for the quality, I wouldn’t say it was quite like home cooked. I mean it was all cooked fresh and all, but it used a lot of long shelf life vegetables like dried beans and potatoes, and sometimes it definitely had an aftertaste of basement lol. Though at least most of the stuff was fresh. There used to be a truck unloading produce whenever I was going into the school since I got there early

Overall I’d definitely say the school food was at least palatable

In the Netherlands, kids usually bring their own bread. Cafeterias do offer food, but that’s mostly bread with something (salad, egg, cheese, etc) or fastfood alternatives. Cafeteria food is usually not free, so they’d have to spend their own money on that, which they do, of course, and throw out the boring lunch their mom packed.

When I started high school in Germany, there wasn’t even a cafeteria. You could only buy some snacks or crappy pizza slices from the caretaker. During lunch break, students mostly ate food they brought from home or went to some nearby food places. Later on, they built a proper cafeteria and the food there was pretty decent. It was provided by a local catering company and you had the choice between 2 different menus each day (vegetarian and non-vegetarian). There was a decent variety, it usually contained fresh vegetables and it tasted fine. Personally, I wouldn’t say it was as good as home-made, but I guess that depends upon your home.

I haven’t been to a US school or a prison, so I can’t really compare it to those. Though from what I’ve read, prison food isn’t particularly bad here either, so maybe it’s not even that different, IDK.

I remember food in German school cafeterias not being too good, but also not too bad, the teachers ate there too after all. We only had one day a week where school was longer than 1pm, so you only ate at school once a week. They tried to introduce more healthier options around the time I left school.

Yes unless you’re in the 0,1% and your school actively blocks the poors by having college level tuition for basic adecation. There is closer, but still worse than the average southern European cantine.

Yeah we don’t really do school cafeterias. You bring your own food. My middle school did sell some greasy snacks like sausage in a bun but you won’t see a decent lunch being sold

Back when i was in school our school cafeteria was pretty much just a restaurant with three different menus and you paid 12 bucks per meal but got 10 back from the school. Kind of a weird system but the food was really good and at the end cheap.