It’s easy to be nostalgic for the 70s, but people waxing poetic about school cafeteria lunches back in the day are wearing some serious rose-colored glasses.
President Lyndon B Johnson had just signed the Child Nutrition Act in 1966 with the intent of making school lunches more healthy. Looking at the lunches we got in the 70s, though, you’d think he just signed the Jello and Pizza Act.
Let these pics of poor souls in the 1970s “enjoying” their school lunches transport your taste buds back to an age of Salisbury Steak and fruit cocktail. Sure, you might be able to find some of these foods today, but who’d want to?
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School lunch from the 70s. Hits the four main food groups: Pizza, pretzel, corn, and chocolate.
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High school lunch in the late 70s. Literally just potato chips. Not healthy or filling, but delicious. And better than whatever the lunch ladies were serving.
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Eating school lunch with Mom, 1972. Hard to tell what the meal even is, and the black and white ain’t helping!
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A school lunch consisting of pizza, mac and cheese milk, and what appears to be some type of green potion.
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Lunch line at a Louisiana high school in the 1970s. Lots of brown foods!
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70s school lunches in England were just as mystifying. Lunch ladies in Newcastle, 1978.
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Cafeteria lunch menu for a high school in Lafayette, Louisiana, 1978. Features such delicious dishes as ‘Broiled Luncheon Meat’ and ‘Lettuce-Pineapple Cheese Salad’.
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Hard to tell what is even being served here. Not knowing or trusting what you were about to eat was a hallmark of 70s school lunches.
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Pizza Friday was home to a form of pizza that seemed not to exist anywhere else: the rectangular pizza slice. Despite paling in comparison to ‘actual’ pizza, kids still looked forward to it more than pretty much anything else.
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Sloppy joes were another staple, and many a kid went home with a stained shirt as a result. What 1970s cafeterias’ obsession with slop was about, we’ll never truly know.
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A school meal circa the early 70s that was noted as being ‘well-balanced’. Not the most flavorful, though.
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Kids eating fish fingers, baked beans, and potato in 1974.
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A 1974 school lunch menu, complete with fish sticks and seafood patties on Fridays.
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Cafeteria lunch circa 1970s. Some days were better than others.
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Hunt’s Snack Pack puddings were the perfect brought-from-home addition to a 70s school lunch. Nothing wraps up a meal like delicious brown sludge.
