Chinese Students Repulsed by American School Lunches

"Your school is suspected of violating the Geneva treaty."

Phone Eats First

As Westerners flock to RedNote ahead of a looming "TikTok ban," a large-scale Sino-American cultural exchange is off to the races — and taking some interesting turns.

One particularly fruitful dialogue has been a lunch-sharing trend between high-school aged Chinese and American students across the digital divide, often to the horror of the latter.

"In case anyone was curious what public school lunches often looked like," began an American's post, alongside a foul sampling of processed chicken nuggets, bland white bread, and scoop of plain mashed potatoes that looks a little too reminiscent of ice cream. "This was all of it. The juice and water cost extra money and the bread was very hard."

That particular post has since taken off, garnering copycats and over 6,000 comments from disgusted Chinese netizens.

The prison-style food is "non human treatment" wrote one. "Your school is suspected of violating the Geneva treaty," pined another.

Others replied by posting their own school lunches, like a user whose meal consisted of a splendid array of colorful fish, veggie rice, mushrooms, and dumplings. "Free lunch, not very good," they commented.

That's a tough roll to swallow, because in contrast to the American equivalent, Chinese school lunches look like heaven on a tray.

Exchange Students

The trend is a fascinating look at what happens when insulated societies collide online. Where things will go next is anyone's guess; China has historically been quick to ban foreign web services authorities don't approve of, but the scale of this influx of international visitors to a Chinese social network appears to be unprecedented.

Chinese RedNoters — hailing from a society unabashedly conscious of issues like class, labor, and Western hegemony — aren't afraid to spell it all out for their American guests.

When one American student posted a photo of an unflatteringly brown meal on a white Styrofoam tray with the caption "our Department of Agriculture calls this meal 'rich in whole grains,'" a Chinese user replied: "Whole grain is a term used by capitalists to deceive people. The skin of grains is called bran. It was previously fed to pigs, but now it is sold to humans at a higher price."

One thing's for sure: American school lunches suck.

If overwhelming research linking free quality lunch to student health and wellbeing isn't enough to compel us to change, some sarcastic Chinese teens probably won't move the needle — but at least we can hope.

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