Farm-to-table vegetables, freshly prepared sandwiches, and a bounty of low-sugar and low-calorie options are more commonplace on today’s school lunch menus than ever before.

Longtime highly processed food lunch staples, such as sloppy Joe’s, tater tots and canned vegetables, have given way to fresher, less processed alternatives as government and school officials take aim at the childhood obesity epidemic. But the changes of the past decade have not been without controversy.

Throughout President Barack Obama’s eight years in office, First Lady Michelle Obama followed in the long-held tradition of taking up a cause. In her case, it was nutrition and fitness among the youngest members of society.

Through the Let’s Move! campaign, the First Lady visited different schools to share her vision of health and wellness.

The then-President followed suit with changes to the National School Lunch Program, which is tied to school districts that receive free or reduced lunch subsidies for children from low- to moderate-level income homes.

Obama announced changes through the National School Lunch Program that included a number of requirements. Among them: increased servings of whole grains, fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products, including milk.

While nutrition experts and others have lauded some of the more recent changes to school lunches, criticism has been leveled as well for two key reasons — the cost of implementing the changes and the continued occurrence of the all-too-familiar problem of plate waste.

In 2014, years into the changes, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank organization, took aim at the Obama administration’s changes to the National School Lunch Program. At the time, some U.S. school districts were grappling with increased costs and the prospect of transferring money from other funds to make ends meet.

While well intended, there also have critiques early on that the low-calorie, low-sugar options were not favored by students, leading to wasted food — a phenomenon that was well chronicled prior to the Obama-era changes as well.

According to a study from Penn State in the 2018-19 school year, U.S. schools on average had plate waste ranging from 27% to 53%. Other developed countries in the study had lower rankings. Sweden,, for example, had a 23% rate, while Italy ranged from 20% to 29%.