HALIFAX, Va. – Parents are venting their frustrations online after a Halifax mother posted a picture of a school lunch served to her daughter this week.

Shavia Dixon told WSET her daughter often comes home hungry from school, but she didn’t completely understand why until the junior at Halifax County High School sent her a picture of her lunch on Wednesday.

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The image showed Deondra Dixon’s lunch tray with a banana, tortilla and a minuscule amount of taco meat and cheese. The message was accompanied by a text: “I’m starving.”

“My daughter sent me this saying this is all they gave her on her tray for lunch! She told me she was starving,” Dixon posted to Facebook with a picture of the depressing school lunch. “That hurt me and pissed me off! So of course I took her something to eat and the receptionist let her sit in the office and eat and they were shocked when they saw the picture.

“She went to an administrator and she said that’s how much the federal government allows them to give. What is this to give our children to eat?” she continued. “They are starving our children! A faculty member in the office backed my daughter up that this is what the children got. Now I see why my kids come home hungry all the time. Parents this is why your children come home wanting to eat after school.”

Dixon’s post garnered thousands of shares and hundreds of comments in the two days after she put it up online, with many parents expressing the same concerns about lunches served through the National School Lunch Program.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture imposed numerous nutritional restrictions on foods served in schools at the behest of former first lady Michelle Obama in 2012. In the years since, more than 1.5 million students have stopped eating lunch served at school, and waste tied to a requirement that students take a fruit or vegetable – whether they want it or not – has boosted food waste by more than $1 billion annually.

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“Mine r in high school but they come home every day starved to death,” Shannon Thacker posted to Facebook in response to Dixon’s picture.

“No ma’am. That is not enough food for any human being,” Delores Kerns added. “You are brave to take a stand.”

“Ya’ll can thank Michelle,” Dai Dai Sanders wrote.

“That’s crazy, (people) in jail get more then that,” Luis Rivera posted.

Dixon told The Gazette-Virginian she believes the skimpy school lunches are “ridiculous.”

“I felt like crying when my daughter sent me that photo. It hurt me to have my child text me saying ‘mom, I’m hungry,’” Dixon said.

“How are kids supposed to concentrate on an empty stomach?”

Lori Hale, who runs Halifax County Public Schools’ food service program, defended the puny taco and other school lunches, alleging “the photo does not show what a school lunch could be.”

Students are offered three to five items based on the tight federal regulations on calories, sugar, fat, sodium and other elements, and it appears Deondra Dixon only took three items.

A Gazette-Virginian reporter visited the high school cafeteria on Thursday and spoke with students and teachers about the situation.

“This food is nasty,” students said as they dumped their chicken teriyaki in the trash.

Several teachers eating lunch Thursday also complained about the tiny tacos the day prior, and said their own children are also usually starving when they get home.

Others who posted in the Gazette-Virginian comments confirmed the same school food problems in other places, as well.

“Talk to parents that go to school on special days and have breakfast or lunch with children. The serving size is ridiculous small and some of the food is actually uneatable,” Kim Carter wrote. “Elementary schools are even worse.”

“The school meals are like that,” Elizabeth Gileau posted. “My daughter was losing so much weight cause she (wasn’t) getting enough to eat or the food was so disgusting she wasn’t eating. So now I make her lunches myself, weight all gained back. This is ridiculous.”