FARMINGTON, Mich. – Detroit-area students think school lunches prepared in accordance with Michelle Obama’s nutritional recipe are “nasty,” “dry,” and “not tasty at all,” and they want the government to butt out of their lunch room, HometownLife.com reports.

“Personally, I don’t care for it. At the high school level, we should be able to make choices of what we eat – not have laws doing it for us,” Harrision High School senior Alex Voyles told the news site.

Harrison senior Dashe Sanders also resents federal restrictions on school food imposed through the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act – the first lady’s pet project.

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“If I want to eat like a fat person, let me eat like a fat person,” she said.

Other students in the Detroit-area Farmington School District, like Harrison junior Keiann Walker, just want school officials to bring back the old menu.

“It’s not as good as it was before,” he told Hometown Life. “I understand being healthy, but everyting’s all different – it just doesn’t taste like it used to.”

That’s because federal restrictions on calories, fat, sodium, sugar, whole grain and other aspects of foods served at schools participating in the National School Lunch Program has forced school officials to serve bland and unappetizing cafeteria fare.

Farmington nutrition supervisor Angela Davis said restrictions of fat and sodium makes the food “dry,” but another common student complaint is “the portions are not large.”

She told Hometown Life the federal regulations, which have steadily increased since 2012, are “good at times, but it is getting quite expensive.”

The cost comes from more expensive ingredients, as well as a mandate that all students take a fruit or vegetable whether they want one or not. But schools are also enduring significant lunch revenue losses, increased food waste, and declining sales from vending machines, school stores, and student fundraisers.

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More than a million students have dropped out of the National School Lunch Program since the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act took effect in 2012.

“It has impacted many of our clubs and activities that had bake sales before school,” Harrison assistant principal Angela Leach told the news site.

It was the same story this week in Kentucky’s Anderson County Schools, where The Anderson News is highlighting the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act’s disproportionate effect on the district’s poorest children.

School officials blame the federal restrictions for a sharp decline in breakfast and lunch sales this year, driven mostly by students who receive federally subsidized free or reduced lunches.

“From August through December of 2014, the school district served 23,539 fewer breakfasts and lunches than during the same months in 2013, a decline of just over 8 percent,” according to the news site. “Fifty-four percent of that reduction came from students who receive free or reduced lunches, with the balance coming from students who pay full price.”

The worst part is that many of the students aren’t bringing food from home instead.

“My friend would not even eat today because she said the food is gross,” highschooler Madison Hagen told The Anderson News. “Because she didn’t eat, she had to get crackers from the school nurse.”

Parent Melinda Campbell said she’s eaten lunch at the school, “and I would not feed that to my dogs.”

“When they have breakfast they have pancakes without syrup. What kind of a breakfast is that?” she questioned.

Sixth-grader Haley Abell also doesn’t get nearly enough for lunch.

“I’m hungry, especially on days when I don’t like what they have, because there are only two or three good things that are served,” she said. “I just wait and go home and eat after school.”

Anderson County superintendent Sheila Mitchell told the news site school officials “don’t want children to be hungry,” and place the blame for the problem where it belongs.

“I wish we weren’t under such strict guidelines,” she said. “They care clearly causing some kids not to eat.”

They’re also taking a toll on lunch revenues, which had been at a “healthy surplus.”

Sales in Anderson County schools are down 9.5 percent, and officials are “basically trying to break even,” district food service director Ronnie Fields told The Anderson News.