Greg Toppo has a thorough piece in USA Today about school lunches. Long story short: They’re disgusting. A little competition in this arena would do a body good, but the politics (yes, messing with the school lunch program is political) are such that allowing schools to do the smart thing—i.e., find local purveyors to supply their cafeterias with decent food—isn’t currently feasible.

Plus, as long as students are responsible for paying only about a dollar or two of their daily lunch costs, they’re going to eat preprocessed garbage.