I thought this was interesting:
“Andre Jahchan, a 16-year-old sophomore at Esteban Torres High School, said the food was “super good” at the summer tasting at L.A. Unified’s central kitchen. But on campus, he said, the chicken pozole was watery, the vegetable tamale was burned and hard, and noodles were soggy.”
Preparation may well be as much of a problem as the dishes themselves. It could also be that the “super good” dishes at the summer testing used better ingredients and had fewer cost constraints than the actual school kitchens. “Fresh” ingredients cost more than institutional-grade mystery meat, so it’s not impossible the schools are cutting corners on the recipes in order to keep the food costs low.
Nobody’s doing endurance testing of the stuff under the warming lamps.
Think your on to something. I say both cheaper ingredients and kitchen staff isn’t paying enough attention during the cooking process and just are not skilled enough to pull some stuff off day to day. Really not that surprising considering some of the stuff I have seen come out of restaurants.
Or, more likely, administrators getting kickbacks to not question food quality from the suppliers.
School cafeterias are an example of socialism. To improve food quality, competition is needed. The minimum would be to allow students to bring their own food if they don't like the cafeteria food (which isn't allowed in some places). In high schools, the population is generally large enough to support two or more vendors.