Partly caused by a lot of well-intentioned policies aimed to get kids to eat healthier. But some kids are picky eaters and just won't eat. For example, a dumb policy required that every kid take a fruit or vegetable with their meal, which many just proceeded to throw out.
Furthermore, schools had to serve healthier food but with the same low budget, yet healthy food is often more expensive. So schools ended up selling gross "low-quality" healthy food instead of regular junk food. Like fruit which is almost spoiled, or something which literally looks like slop or nutraloaf. Most schools are severely understaffed and underbudget and their kitchens don't have much, they're not making steamed vegetables or grilled chicken or quinoa, they're making overcooked frozen vegetables and meat trimmings.
What's the solution? Obviously it's not just reverting back to junk food, as kids really need to eat healthier, of course it's allocating more money to the schools for providing meals. Also I think schools could do a lot just by having more variety and allowing kids to take more variable portions: kids who don't like the food just take less or none at all, kids who need the food can take extra. But idk, it's bureaucracy and I don't expect it to get much better. Some schools already have their lunch program down: they serve genuinely great-quality food while maintaining low budget and effort. And some schools are just terribly managed and the faculty just don't care and the lunch dept is putting in the minimum effort to not get yelled at by state/feds with no regard to what they are actually serving or whether it's edible.
Is there information from the students about the reason(s) that they don't want to consume school-provided meals?
And is there a sense of how often this is occurring? (is it a particular problem in some locations and not others, or widespread?)