“It took a special level of incompetence by mooche, government level incompetence, to get students to long for the good ole days of student lunches.”
You must be right. I can’t recall ever hearing much good about the palatability of most school lunches before these changes, so the new stuff must be really bad. Probably doesn’t help that in most places, from what I’ve heard, the slop is prepared in advance off-site and then brought in and reheated. That works OK for some things (or if done with care - I’ve had some good catered meals that were produced off-site), but many things lose color, flavor, and appearance when prepared so long ahead of time. Of course most of this stuff is produced by the lowest bidder for a contract, with price and meeting the government nutrition regulations foremost, and the looks and palatability of the food somewhat down the list from there.