Probably, when you were in school, the food was made from scratch by local lunch ladies. I loved our school food - meatloaf, mashed potatoes, etc.... now it is all prepared, frozen and just heated by the lunch ladies. Most of it tastes like a cheap tv dinner. Nothing is really fried, just heated in the oven so limp baked “french fries”, soggy baked chicken nuggets. One of my “favorites” when my son was in school was a roasted potato wedge.... it had nothing on it for seasoning because salt is bad you know. So kindergartners were given this hunk of roasted potato and it went straight into the trash most of the time.
Our lunch ladies were country mamas who knew how to cook real food. None of this premade fake junk. OMG, the smell of baking homemade yeast rolls drifted all through the hallways!!! The lemon pepper or fried chicken was a real piece of chicken with a bone, meat and skin not some ground up mess. At our school today, they'll serve a baked potato with a butter sauce. Sure, the kids like it because it has a ton of sugar added to the sauce. One day, I asked what was in the sauce and the ladies just looked at me like huh? because it was premade but one finally mumbled it was only butter. Yeah, I just fell off the turnip truck. That was about the same duh? response I got out of them when I asked what was in the hamburger patties that was making my kid upchuck every time it was served. But it's 100% pure beef!!! Sure, there goes that turnip truck again.
“One of my “favorites” when my son was in school was a roasted potato wedge.... it had nothing on it for seasoning because salt is bad you know. So kindergartners were given this hunk of roasted potato and it went straight into the trash most of the time.”
Well of course! A potato might be rich in nutrients, but it has next to no flavor on its own. Kids (and for that matter, quite a few adults) aren’t going to eat flavorless food no matter how good it is for them.