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The story
A photo claiming to show how skimpy school lunch side dishes have become since lunches went free spread across 5ch’s Nandemo Jikkyo G board. Faced with a menu of white rice, soup, one piece of fried chicken, two cherry tomatoes, and milk, commenters piled on with “prison food looks fancier than this,” and one poster said a similar menu had turned up at an elementary school in Sapporo. The thread also noted that going free came with the per-meal budget capped at around 250 yen, which snowballed into broader doubts about the whole policy’s design.
Thanks a lot, free lunch program.
Source: imgur.com / Original post here
What people said
No way LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
What even is this? lol
I'm in central Kanagawa Prefecture, and the city's own newsletter shows pretty much the same thing.
This is bringing me to tears.
Might as well hold class at Shabuyo (an all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu chain) where they snatch the side dishes right off your plate.
If this photo is real, there's going to be complaints.
It's real.
https://zaisatsu.jp/news/article-66063/
A Sapporo municipal elementary school posted its lunch newsletter: white rice, soup, one piece of fried chicken, two cherry tomatoes, and milk.
Hoooold up LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Isn't this bad?
https://imgur.com/lIyXnOT
Worse than wartime rations, lmao
They even put the sausage and egg on a separate little plate, which somehow makes it look even more pathetic.
If you're low in the class pecking order, you'd probably end up having to hand your food over to someone else — and then go home and lie about how great it tasted.
No matter the grade, there's no way this meets nutrition standards. It doesn't even cover basic calories.
The biggest problem is deadbeat (DQN) parents who don't pay their lunch fees. That created a sense of unfairness, which is what pushed things toward 'free for everyone' — and now we're stuck with this.
Yeah, exactly this. I'm not saying sell an organ, but they should be collecting those fees somehow — installments, wage garnishment, whatever it takes.
Dog food comes in bigger portions than this…
I'm crying right now.
The masses are always kind of dumb, huh.
They'd go 'excuse me?'
Unfortunately, the menu in Re: #1 IS the best a dietitian could come up with under a strict 250-yen-per-meal cap.
It's on the parents and politicians who screamed for free lunches. The local government just implemented it and got this result, so the blame falls on all the adults involved in this.
Sorry, wrong image.
What even is this.
Alcohol?! LMAO
Wait, what? This is 250 yen?
Yep. It used to be parents paying 5,000 yen a month; now the government covers 5,000 yen a month instead. There are about 20 weekdays a month, so that averages out to 250 yen per meal. It was on NHK.
No no, hold on — this is 250 yen? For that you could just buy a bento, couldn't you?
Background and Points of Debate
The shift to free school lunches reportedly replaced the fee parents used to pay (around 5,000 yen a month) with a government subsidy, and posters in the thread pointed out that this works out to a budget of roughly 250 yen per meal. That figure, though, traces back to a single poster citing an NHK report — it hasn’t been verified as a uniform nationwide standard. Opinions split over whether the skimpy side dishes stem from the ‘free lunch’ system’s design itself or from parents who simply don’t pay their lunch fees, and neither explanation goes beyond speculation. Some also pointed out that a single photo doesn’t reveal which grade it’s for or confirm that the portion shown is really what gets served, so treating one widely shared picture as representative of the whole country may be premature.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G board) thread “[Bad News] School Lunch Side Dishes Are Seriously Disappearing.”
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