This complaint is universal when applied to Institutional food. Yeshiva, public school cafeterias, colleges, hospitals, summer camps, nursing homes………
Add the additional costs of kosher, glatt kosher, cholov Yisroel, pas Yisroel and the cost per meal escalates or the quality/variety/quantity must be lowered.
When I was on the board of a day school in the 1990s, we had complaints that the children had not been served meat in three straight months. We had approved and paid bills for many cases of chicken. Turns out, the chicken was being taken home by those staff members who also housed out of town kids and used to feed the staff family and the students suppers and shabbos meals.
Only when the school accepted government lunch funds (and government surplus foods) were lunches required to meet Type A standards for protein, vegetables, starch, sugar and fat.
Gone were the days of May lunches made of fried matzo (bought when the supermarkets marked it down to 10 cents per pound) made without eggs and phony powdered ‘no fruit juice’ punch.
It is up to parents to get involved and insist on healthy meals at Yeshivas, not to say we suffered through it, so can our kids.
BTW…this all ties into the thread about Yeshiva tuition. Day schools need at least $5 per day to feed kids a balanced kosher lunch (no one wants pasta every day), a teen-aged yeshiva bochur easily costs $100 or more per week to feed in a dormitory situation.
For a reality check: Typical college treif meal plans (19 meals per week-brunch on weekends, not breakfast and lunch) cost about $3000 per semester. The average semester is about 14 weeks…that works out to more than $200 per week.
Some colleges have kosher dining which accepts the meal plan. If attending a college with private kosher dining you can expect to pay double.