it is not that difficult to make reasonably tasty and healthy meals out of mostly affordable ingredients.
if they want to, that is.
we had something called “mystery meat” that nobody would eat.
yet, they kept serving it, week after week.
government food.
and then somebody made a clerical error and ordered a boxcar full of cranberries instead of a caseload, the week before Thanksgiving. We were served cranberry stew, cranberry soup, cranberry juice, cranberry mush, cranberry jello, cranberry cake, cranberry pie, cranberry mold, etc..... until school let out in June. ha ha. but they did manage to get rid of all the surplus cranberries, I think.
(half of them hit the garbage pails of course, but the other half of their obviously-improvised recipes actually worked out ok)
LOL. And as a result, every kid in that school developed a life-long aversion to cranberries.