Pic 5 looks like modern art stuffed into a washing machine, holy hell

Probably fake or misleading. There aren't enough calories pictured in these images.

aka school lunches. pretty sure theyre usin the same playbook

My biggest complaint about the pics is the trays are different. The military probably has a standard tray that they buy, and likely wouldn't use a compostable lidded container as shown in pic one.

I think maybe a little misleading, but probably not fake. For the boxed meal, that shit happened all the time. It's just like going through the drive through.

For meals served on ships, most of the time you ask for what you want, they don't just give you what they have. If you have a piece of bread on your tray, that's because you only grabbed a piece of bread. Most of the time.

Sometimes there's just not a lot of options because you haven't been replenished in a while and the cooks have already done what they can to keep people from bitching at them constantly. Fresh fruits and vegetables are always the first to spoil, so eventually everything is canned, frozen, rehydrated, or reconstituted. Or baked from scratch, poorly.

I can't speak for the modern military, but when I was in almost 30 years ago there were not standard trays. The chow halls were different from base to base.

Prison food.

Ah, so the US is one of them "shithole" countries the pedophile likes to make fun of, huh?

Every accusation is a confession with them.

Can you give any sources? Personal experience from an anonymous account on a niche website isn't to be taken as truth :(

Now do modern prison and public school food for comparison.

Is that an actual shoe sole in the second picture?

Sorry, I didn't take pictures of the trays 30 years ago. I really don't care if you believe it or not. Just making a comment.

I got better food in county jail...

What's that silver slab thing in the second picture? :D And that blob that looks like a giant kidneybean in the 4th pic?

Beiged mystery meat

MRE's are better than that slop

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/07/07/what-s-in-a-prison-meal

Actual photos of prison food, just for comparison.

My dad was on an aircraft carrier when he served. One of his favorite stories to tell was when his ship was riding out a hurricane and fishing trawlers couldn't get into port to unload their catch. The trawlers sold the ship for next to nothing tons of the biggest shrimp they had ever seen. It took 3-4 bites to eat each shrimp. The sailors stuffed themselves on shrimp for the next week.

Almost certainly misleading, but the underlying truth is that shits fucked

I've seen these pictures attributed to USS Abraham Lincoln on some other sites.

That ship recently suffered a major supply crisis while it was on station in the middle east. The reason is that Iran was able to deny the use of all of the nearby bases with their drones and medium range missiles. Thus the US Navy resorted to resupplying Abraham Lincoln from Diego Garcia, which is thousands of miles away.

So it's plausible to me that these are real images, and they represent a very serious problem for the navy: both in terms of total calories and in the loss of morale from low quality.

In any case, Abraham Lincoln has since been relieved, and will make a liberty port call in Thailand after 245 days at sea.

In the US, yes.

Apart from being rather sparse helpings, are you sure there are actually cooks on the galley? Because any halfway decent cook can still produce decent meals even from substandard produce.

I mean, 2 of the 3 pictures that show trays show the same trays. The rest are all takeout containers, which are the kind of consumable that makes sense to be just whatever Supply can requisition. And I'm more likely to believe different tray styles per class, I.e. submarines might have a more efficient (and therefore costlier) design for more cramped quarters that a carrier doesn't necessarily need.

Accepting such posts does mean becoming even more vulnerable to misinformation and propaganda hence I don't.

Caloric intake is one of the complaints of people on the ship...the tortilla one is for sure real, that's from when the stories first started coming out.

The price of MURICAN Freedom^TM^

At least it is served attractively.

Prison food in Austria wasn't great but it was MILES ahead of whatever this is supposed to me.

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.

Devastation caused by US service men and women:

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/6/8/satellite-images-show-destruction-of-the-us-israel-war-on-iran

What is that thing that looks like an oversized date or an exotic turd?

Let’s get this out onto a tray………nice!!

And i thought brazillian prision food was bad...

Less chance to get shot in prison

Silver slab reminds me of the meat slices that Aldi sells in their frozen gyro kits, probably the same thing, a slice of homogenized mystery meat. Not sure about the blob

Idk... I feel like that kind of incompetence is almost unimaginable with an unprecedentedly well-funded organization known the world over for its logistical capabilities... But the people saying it's fake happen to be the biggest liary lying liars there ever were, so im a bit divided.

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

Drastically higher chance of getting shanked tho

Weren't these images posted ages ago claiming they were school lunches?

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.

I’d rather eat a gas station burrito.

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.

Not pictured, food served to members of the US Air Force. Airmen actually get paid a bonus stipend for food when visiting other non-air force bases for a reason.

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.

As a non-american

\c\downrighthilarious

Ohh if you’re pissed at this just wait until you hear that the administration is funding the war out of the payroll for the armed services.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/27/trump-iran-war-navy-budget

When sailors stop getting paychecks on time it’s gonna be lit.

yeah it's pretty infuriating that terrorists get free meals