If you’re curious about the history, public school lunches were federally funded and made free under FDR during WWII to combat malnourishment, especially for high schoolers who were getting drafted after turning 18.

It was so successful that the US continued the policy even after the war ended, and hence cafeterias became the default since they include a large kitchen that’s capable of producing high quality food at large quantities.

That is until Reagen, among a crap ton of other things, nuked lots of the socialist policies which included free school lunches.

Schools continued to produce lunch, but you had to pay.

40+ years of insane decline later, and public schools are so under funded that they can’t even afford to produce lunch in their cafeterias anymore. American consumerism shoved its way in, so now everything is prepackaged garbage made as cheaply as possible from the same conglomerates that make unhealthy trash that’s often banned by other countries due to health risks.

The final killing blow was when Michelle Obama failed to tackle this core issue in her student health campaign, and they forced public schools to ban essentially flavor as a concept (anything “high” in salt, spice, oil/fats, calories, etc).

Everything was switched over to “healthy” options which literally just meant low fat/zero calorie slop or sugar slop.

If you want a real kicker, the chocolate milk they served at my HS had 28g of sugar per serving lol. But don’t worry because the vending machines now only have baked potato chips and diet soda.