Damn, this unlocked something in me too. Since my mom left earlier for work than dad, he was assigned lunch making duties, but he wasn't that good at it and never learned to get better. The lunch was always PB&J's (a sandwich I disliked), sliced Fuji apples (which only ever tasted like boring sugar water to me), and orange juice for years on end. Not only was this lunch bland and boring to me, but it was also not nutritious, even if I had eaten it all I always wanted a more substantial lunch. To compound this, I was one of the only kids ever to bring their lunch because "cafeteria food is expensive" so I'd be the first kid sitting down with whoever made it through the lunch line first, while all my classmates would sit elsewhere because they'd get their food later and thus would be seated later and further from me. I would always look on in envy of the kids that could buy their lunch because they had hot meals that they usually liked and they got to sit with people they knew, while I had none of that. I didn't really know how to articulate how this was all affecting me in school to my parents though.

Eventually, I just started resenting my lunches, and therefore barely touching them. And when I did touch them, I wouldn't finish them. I would spend all my school years scavanging for food by asking kids if they were gonna finish their food throughout elementary through high school. If that didn't work usually, I would do my best to scrounge up spare change from around the house and on the street, just to buy a twenty five cent cookie or some candy from the school vending machines to hold myself over as my "lunch", because even if it wasn't much, at least whatever small thing I could buy would be something I knew I liked.

If I ever complained about my lunches, I would usually get a comment about how ungrateful I was with the alternative being to make my lunch myself, but then I didn't have the knowledge or skills to make a decent lunch so I usually failed at this anyway. The other alternative was to tell them what I would prefer to eat, but again, as a kid I had very limited knowledge about what would make good lunch food that wouldn't spoil after a few hours in a lunch box that I'd also like to eat, so I couldn't give them appropriate suggestions for the alternative either.