School lunch.
For many of us, the dread words conjure one glimmer of hope -- that a delicious carton of chocolate milk could be sipped illicitly, far from Mom's watchful, sugar-phobic eyes.
White, gluey pizza stuck to the plate by "cheese"; burger patties so flat they looked like they'd been stomped on by the gym teacher; the terror of sitting on one of those red shared seats with a classmate of the opposite gender (red means love, orange means friends) -- school lunch, in the best of times, can be traumatic.
When we stumbled upon this Web site of school lunches around the world we felt not terror, but rage.
Look at the French lunch: mussels, a steamed artichoke, baguette, cheesecake, half a pink grapefruit and French fries. Seriously? Was this staged purely to infuriate American diners raised on beaten-down chicken nuggets and gummy peach slices from a can? And French fries? Does a beret come with it, too?
We can't even talk about the beauty of the Chinese and Japanese lunches (though we're sure natives would be able to point out similar issues: "more miso soup? blech!"). Ethnocentrism aside, the stuff looks dang good to us.
Did you go -- miracle of miracles -- to a school that served decent lunches? Does this site not put you into a righteous rage? We're just going to sit here wishing we could take back our youth until someone makes us feel better.
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