To be fair school lunches were not any more appetizing back when I was in school. At reunions we sit around and talk about the time Jimmy Carter bailed out the turkey farmers, and we were served some form of reconstituted, processed turkey product nearly every day for a year and a half.
In Jr. High, we actually had lunch ladies come in and prepare lunches from scratch, including baking cookies from scratch, which were huge and 5 cents each. The mashed potatoes were real and the meatloaf was delicious. But, this was in the 60’s.