crazymatt1

There has been an increased focus on buying local products, including specific allowances in procurement regulations to allow schools to give preference to local vendors. It's possible that the school was able to purchase the salmon you delivered at a significantly lower price than the local vendors could offer.

It's also possible that the salmon you delivered was part of the USDA Foods program, where USDA purchases large quantities of various food products and gives each school an allowance to purchase those foods from USDA.

Michelle Obama brought a major focus on children's health during her tenure as first lady. the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act brought significant changes to the NSLP. The two main ones visible on students' trays are whole grains and vegetable subgroups.

• All grain items served must be at least 50% whole-grain. This has lead to some interesting developments from major food companies (think whole-grain Pop-Tarts).
• All lunches must now contain servings of both fruits and vegetables
• Over the course of a week, schools must offer servings from each of the following subgroups:
  • Dark green
  • Red/Orange
  • Starchy
  • Beans/Peas/Legumes
  • Other

This has led to an increase in the variety of vegetables served to students. Edamame is a very popular choice among school lunches now!

It was probably this. You can do a search for "CN label pizza" to see all of the options that are out there now!

When you say "state lunches", I'm guessing you mean the National School Lunch Program. As you said, schools are not required to participate in the NSLP until they hit a threshold of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals.

There are a number of factors that go into the perceived quality of the meals. First, as you mentioned, there are nutritional guidelines and meal pattern requirements that must be met for a meal to be considered reimbursable under the NSLP. Each meal must contain the following components:

• Meat/meat alternate
• Grain
• Fruit
• Vegetable
• Fluid milk

There are additional requirements (sodium levels, fat content, whole-grain content, vegetable subgroups, etc.) that also come into play. For example, deep-frying is not allowed as a cooking method for any foods served in the NSLP. If your old meals weren't adhering to these requirements, then (especially from a child's perspective) the new meals could be perceived as lower quality.

There is also a financial consideration. For the contiguous United States, the maximum reimbursement amounts for lunches are:

​

Free	$3.75
Reduced-price	$3.35
Paid	$0.48

If your school was previously providing significantly higher cost meals, they may not have been able to afford those under the NSLP reimbursement model.

It's called "live-to-tape", and it's the way all of the late night shows (and probably most talk shows) are produced. I can't find a good reasoned explanation, but it seems like it would require less post-production work, which would be important on a show with a quick turnaround like a daily talk show.