Having a school lunch in a "poor" former eastern block country as a guest was really eye opening. It was actually good, fresh made borscht, veg dishes that tasted good (wasn't steamed)! Like, I would order and enjoy it at a restaurant level no-bad. Who knew that was even possible? From what I can tell, a non-crappy school lunch is the norm all over Europe. Why can't America have that?
In the Netherlands there's no school lunch available. Families need to provide it to their children. The norm is just bread and cheese sandwich and milk, doesn't matter how rich you are. That's what most adults eat for lunch too.
fwiw, bread and cheese in the Netherlands kicks the crap out of what is often called "cheese" in the US. However, the situation has at least improved over the past decade if your budget allows it.
The usual truth is that labor costs more in the US than it does anywhere else. A lot of things are just what you get if you have cheap labor. As an example, all over South Asia you can get top-notch personal cooking and cleaning on a daily basis. In the US you cannot. It's because everyone is rich in the US. The embodied cost of labor in everything you get is quite a large fraction.
The median household income in Poland is a quarter that of the US.
And despite spending basically nothing on that lunch, we still charge kids for it
The public blamed the "lazy" lunch ladies of course but the public was the one voting down the school budget to actually pay them to cook. The actual people doing food service have as much agency over the menu as the teen behind the counter at mcdonalds. Those exact same women WERE cooking real food a decade ago. That's how long they had been doing that job.
