Hard, sturdy plastic. A palate of faded colors. Stackable and easy to clean. These words describe something most all of us used at more school time meals than we can count: the hot lunch tray.
Its image is likely coming to mind now. A silverware space along the left-hand side. A large space in the lower right for the entrée. A round circle in the lower left for a side. A small space in the upper left for dessert. Another small space (with a circle in the middle) in the upper right for the milk carton. And a mysterious small space in the upper middle that went unused. These 10-inch by 14-inch trays were an everyday item for decades in schools. I can still envision the lunch ladies spraying them down.
Plenty of these — used and new — can still be found for sale. A couple decades ago, we bought some. Our daughters were young, and we frequently went camping, so Jolene and I thought these trays would be handy. They weren’t. They certainly made life easier in cafeteria kitchens, but they were a pain to wash in the 10-inch by 10-inch sink of our travel trailer. Even so, they are a nostalgic piece of American history.
The school lunch itself also has an interesting history, which is described in depth at this PBS website. According to the site, Philadelphia and Boston were the first major cities to actively implement a school lunch program in the United States, sometime around 1894. It wasn’t national policy until 1946 when the 79th Congress recognized the importance of school lunch and made it official and President Harry S. Truman signed the National School Lunch Act into law.
But is hot lunch good for you? I recall a classmate of mine once asking a teacher that. His reply? “Look at the lunch ladies.” He later apologized to our class — and to the lunch ladies.
Back to those hot lunch cafeteria trays. Are they now a relic? If you are like me, you likely haven’t eaten in a school cafeteria in quite some time. According to a 2011 story in USA Today, some colleges trashed the trays in efforts to save water. The story reported that a senior-level math class found that eliminating trays could cause significant savings in washing costs. Without trays, the school would need less water, cleaning chemicals and labor in the dish room.
One could argue whether that make sense or not, but a very important question still remains: What was that mysterious small space in the upper middle part of the tray used for?
Have a terrific Tuesday, and thanks for reading.
Shane Goodman
President and Publisher
Big Green Umbrella Media
shane@dmcityview.com
515-953-4822, ext. 305 | 
