This picture represents your tax dollars that will be thrown away for several reasons.
1) Since these lunches were paid for through the Federal School Lunch program only individuals under the age of 18 are allowed to eat them. Even those these food items are on the "share" table at the end of snack time they must all be thrown away.
2) Even if we didn't legally have to throw them away, I wouldn't want to eat them. I've tried (shh) these nasty sunflower butter and jelly pouches and couldn't finish them. As you can see here at least 30 kids didn't even bother trying to eat them or the white milk being served (at an afternoon summer program – who wants to drink milk after being hot and sweat for 3 hours?).
3) The kids enjoy some of the snack items, but some of the black boxes represent unopened packages of snack. Some of the younger kids are "forced" to take one even if they don't want to eat it. But they might as well put it on the share table to be thrown away so that tomorrow there is a better chance of getting something more enjoyable.
I don't have a solution (except to find snacks that kids would enjoy). But it all seems like such a waste. These snacks and their friends (lunch) are nasty to look at and don't usually taste that good. Who can blame a kid for putting them on the share table? And with nasty food there isn't too much concern of an adult eating one unless they were desperate, but then we can't mix our Free School Lunches with our other Federal food programs!
– Venting over!