> The problem isn't the MSG. It's providing a well balanced diet. Part of the problem is the logistics and financing of school and generally cantina meals. Un

> The problem isn't the MSG. It's providing a well balanced diet. Part of the problem is the logistics and financing of school and generally cantina meals. Unlike restaurants which can command high meal prices for artisans preparing meals out of ingredients as close to "fresh from the field" as possible, mass kitchens face insane cost pressure, which often means going for pre-processed food with very long shelf lifes for packaged units to keep waste as close to zero as possible. Generally, I love to point at tomatoes when talking about food access and quality... for one, most tomatoes you can buy these days are grown in greenhouses with artificial light and bred to have pretty robust skin to avoid damages in shipping and storage, at the cost of flavor. As an individual making a tomato salad, you can mask off that lack of flavor by just dumping balsamico, olive oil, salt and pepper over the tomatoes... but if you are making, say, a tomato soup in a large ass kitchen for pasta, you'll probably go for the ultra-processed variant from a can or tub: no need to have employees cut up and mash tomatoes, it will keep fresh for far longer than if you'd send someone to the wholesalers to buy tomatoes every day... And the truly ultra large kitchens that make meals for thousands of school children (or prisoners or hospital patients) a day, they probably go for the even cheaper variant and that's where the problems really show - entirely premade tomato sauce, filled with preservatives to prevent the sauce from going bad, with tons of sugar and flavorings to make it palatable (as the source tomatoes are going to be the cheapest, lowest quality, flavorless tomatoes the original processor can find), and quite possibly with a bunch of food dyes on top to appear "healthy red like a good organic tomato".