- cross-posted to:
- pics@lemmy.world
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Asked my nephew who joined the Marines about this. He said this is a “hot tray”. Basically just leftovers for the people that couldn’t make it to meal time for various reasons (his example was 2 people who had to guard their gear while everyone else eats) so they make a tray of whatever is available for them when they’re allowed to go eat.
I mean, when you literally sign up to be cannon fodder, I don’t know what you expect. America has always treated troops and veterans like livestock. You could simply choose a career other than oppressing the third world for oil profits.
Legitimately, I’d like to say I was just making some principled stand, but when I was 18, “the food is famously terrible” was a bigger part of me not joining the military than I’d like to admit 😂
The latest Chinese propaganda has been posting pictures of their aircraft carrier meals.
Yum! Then sign me up for the “Chinese propaganda aircraft carrier” mission 😋
Operation Dim Sum vs The Orange Chicken
One can never get too much Asterix.
An army recruiter came to my extremely poor elementary school, and could basically say anything to us kids. Told us that if we joined the army you can get whatever food you want, at all, from the mess hall and a chef will cook it for you. And yes, being able to get food was a motivating factor for some of us.
I asked if you could get eggs Benedict every day if you asked for it. He looked a little nonplused, then said “oh yeah sure! Every day!”
I knew at that point he was full of it and told him so.
The rich school near me had the same thing. Navy medic came in to describe how amazing the navy treats you. Definitely not a recruiter, though. Made very clear up front that he wasn’t there recruiting. Wink wink, nudge nudge.
Army recruiter in elementary school? Wtf? Just when you think lemmy already showed you what it’s like over there… From “it sucks” to starship troopers’s shit level.
What do you think that story is about in the first place? It’s based on a true story, just painted over to seem like fiction.
I will say, that experience varies wildly by branch, and even chow hall to chow hall within a branch. I was in the Marines, and the “new” chow hall on Pendleton mainside (they opened it about a year after I got there, but that was 15 years ago now) was really pretty good. Solid breakfast burrito line, an omelet station where you could get real eggs, etc. Lunch and dinner had a few options, and a panini bar.
The chow hall we had before that one opened was a dump.
But then, I went TDY to an Air Force base. And let me tell you, that was better than most restaurants I’ve been to.
If the Air Force had to eat at marine corps chow halls until they could pass a DoD audit, they would pass on a month.
I knew this post was going to end on an Air Force story when I read “varies wildly by branch”.
told him so.
How did he respond?
He didn’t like his ruse exposed but tried to play it off and change the subject. The teacher was amused though
Good for you.
Now do modern prison and public school food for comparison.
In the US, yes.
Less chance to get shot in prison
Drastically higher chance of getting shanked tho
Nah, my kids’ district has really good food. But we also have high property taxes that pay for it.
Honestly, the pics I’ve seen of USA school food were worse. Which kinda tracks; I’m sure they value soldiers higher than children.
Above I see full grain rice and a variety of protein sources, if industrially produced. Salad is missing of course but that would be too much to ask Ig
edit: I have heard that it varies. Both the pics in this post and the posts I’ve seen are anecdotal but not isolated outliers either.
School food in the US is highly variable. Each individual school district sets food contracts, and there are over 13,000 districts. That said, many of them have very bad food, especially any district contracting with Sodexo is going to have awful food. But a lot of us make lunch for our kids to bring every day either way
My boys have packed for probably 2-4/5 days forever. They ALWAYS buy on Friday as apparently get a treat - ice cream bars, etc. And, cannot just buy the treat… Mostly they take leftovers. Occasionally (maybe once a week or so?) sandwiches - PBJ, or whatever delimeat we have.
As @protist@retrofed.com just mentioned, it varies greatly.
The lunch at my kids school today is:
- Crispy chicken sandwich
- Tater tots or French fries
- Assorted chilled fruits (from local farms, usually blueberries, strawberries, cranberries, peaches, and apples)
- Choice of veggies: pickles, cole slaw, or cucumber salad
- Milk (1%, fat free, fat free chocolate, soy, almond)
Each of those gets a swap option (not as much variety here given what it is) for allergies and preferences (such as vegan options).
It would be really hard to try and make me consider that worse than what I just looked at.
Edit: Full disclosure, our kids bring their lunch every day, on Fridays they can get an extra treat like cookies or something from there though). My wife makes bread fresh, we get our produce from the local farms too as well as growing a few things ourselves, etc.
Speak for your terrible school district. Mine growing up, and my kid’s today, had magnitudes better food than this slop.
Prison food tho, you’re on the mark based on what I’ve heard from my buddy and my brother from the time they spent back there.
If I can only fix one I’m going with the school food.
The company that ran my alma mater’s cafeteria also served kitchens. The food plan my college had selected was the one below what they serve in prison…
This looks on par or worse than school lunch when i was in grade school. Looks like less too, somehow.
This is the exact same stuff they fed us when I was in Iraq 20 year ago. They gave the contract to the lowest bidder who bought the cheapest food possible then pocketed the “leftover” cash. This isn’t new. The difference between then and now is our families could send us care packages and we didn’t have cell phones to post about the mystery meat. I don’t want anyone to eat like this but I also don’t know why everyone is surprised by wartime food. Food SUCKS when you deploy, it’s why they give troops the big send off steak and lobster dinner. Best way to avoid giving our troops trash food is to NOT DEPLOY THEM.
Back in the day they had ice cream ships… SHIPs… For ice cream…
How the mighty have fallen
They were nicknamed the “ice cream ships” because they had refrigerated holds and freezers, but in reality they moved all kinds of food and perishable supplies, a lot more than just ice cream.
The USN was no doubt very good at logistics in the 40’s, but they didn’t have so much excess capacity they could dedicate entire ships to ice cream.
I also don’t know why everyone is surprised by wartime food.
That’s why awareness needs to be constant. It’s why coke spends a billion a year on advertising despite “everyone knows what coca cola is”.
pro tip: stop fucking joining this shitshow.
For many, joining the US military is the only way out of poverty, a path to citizenship, or a way to a higher education. Some others just are victims of propaganda, or just genuinely sadistic, but unfortunately most of the people joining the military are victims of a failed education and social security system designed to bring more troops into the meat grinder.
EDIT: Holy moly. I do not condone US imperialism at all. I am not saying that people who fall into the poverty draft get a free pass either. What I AM saying is that the US war machine is a fucked system that results in endless atrocities abroad but unfortunately will only to continue unless we dismantle the institutions that blindly draw people to the machine so that these people who would otherwise be vulnerable can wake the fuck up and turn away from it. These systems include capitalism, propaganda, imperialism, jingoism, a failed education system, etc… Chill out friends.
would you say the same for ICE? they also recruit from poor migrant communities because they’re most desperate and the pay and perks are good - would you say they’re justified in joining and terrorising the ones that didn’t?
and while I 100% agree that propaganda and the system failing them is the main reason driving that - we don’t counter the propaganda by normalising the poor-to-terrorist pipeline as “well the system sucks but you gotta do what you gotta do” - there are red lines and if we could collectively resist them - we starve the system from being able to force people into the meat grinder
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You think I care that the only way for them to go to college is to go and murder people in the country I’m from. Fuck them and fuck anyone who makes excuses for the American empire.
Seriously. Oh its ok, you needed to work at Auschwitz to pay for college.
i couldn’t afford college. Didn’t join. Ended up a software engineer. 🤷♀️
service guarantees citizenship
No, it does not. Grew up watching the non-english news, every year you would see reports of people that joined the military with that promise from recruiters and were deported at the end of their service.
I’m making a reference to Starship Troopers, specifically the movie, which was a satire on fascism. “Service guarantees citizenship” was a propaganda line by the fascist government in the movie.
Looks like prison food lol
The US military industrial complex is a prison. People sign up for it for social service benefits that first world countries get given to them as a human right.
I was gonna say, if your other options are poverty / prison, this isn’t actually a bad deal practically speaking. Not gonna get into the ethics of military service other than to say blaming individuals for trying to escape poverty isn’t the answer. When I teach about chronic institutionalization in a psychiatric context, the military is one of the susceptible demographics alongside prison and long term hospitalization.
Prison and poverty is better than risking dying in a war of agression
If the US ever tried to invade Canada, we could probably convince the soldiers to change sides with something as shitty as Tim Horton’s.
I find it crazy as hell that poutine isn’t super common down here. Fries with cheese and gravy? That should be our national dish, damn it!
You can order fries with gravy and cheese at most diners in America (even if you have to go off-menu, anywhere that has both fries and biscuits ‘n’ gravy could do it). Sometimes known as disco fries
Not exactly poutine, but close enough when no fresh curds are available.
Diners have disco fries or loaded fries. Fills the same niche.
That sounds like the sort of food I’d make while black out drunk. Or is some North American thing where the words cottage cheese and gravy mean something different.
Poutine is indeed comfort food that is most tasty when you are shitfaced (or hangover). However a poutine will never contain cottage cheese. The original ingredients are fries/chips, poutine gravy, and cheddar curds. I repeat, cheddar curds. They have to be fresh and make a skweek skweek sound when you bite them, and be a bit melted by the hot gravy. Pieces of mild cheddar are also acceptable if no curds are available.
We have it in some of our northern states and we are not impressed. You can do better than that.
I know we can. I’m saying our trash is better than your military’s trash.
Everything is better than our miltary’s trash
Yes, that was my joke.
Good fuck em. Why would you ever join the military? I don’t care if you’re stupid and poor, I’m stupid and poor, I’d never join that dumb shithead factory
That’s your opinion, there is a lot of benefit to joining
Like killing brown kids and upholding an imperial empire run by pedophiles?
Like what?
And before you say free ride through college, let me head that off - it’s not free if it comes at the cost of human life being churned through the endless war machine.
yeah there is a lot of benefits of becoming a terrorist
You do realize the military keeps out foreign invaders right? So you can wake up in a non war zone?
Bullshit nobody is going to invade the USA when it has nukes. The American army is a terrorist army serving imperialism
You do not “really gotta hand it to ISIS” moment
If that don’t wanna make you die for your country, nothing will.
Devastation caused by US service men and women:
So maybe they should all be in prison, but they should probably have better food than that their prison.
You would think seeing how we spend more on prisons then our schools…
These pictures look pretty good for prison food. Source: friends who have been through it
As a former enlisted who thankfully got medical’d out of the service very early, the ONLY thing I find mildly infuriating 8s that it looks like my old school lunches.
Why do they deserve to get better food than our children?
Anyone still in can kiss my ass. Most enlisted joined within the last 10 years where it’s been a ShitShow since Trump1.0. I joined when I thought Obama was going to be different, but am glad I got out not long after it became clear how much he loves drone strikes. I would have just gone awol when trump showed up.
Modern military deserves the food we give to homeless people. Once we improve the lives of those who have it worst, we can think about getting them better food.
