PEMBROKE, Ga. – Parents in Georgia’s Bryan County School District are complaining that paltry school lunches are leaving students famished when they get home.

School officials agree that the one-size-fits-all approach to school lunches doesn’t work, but pointed to federal food restrictions championed by First Lady Michelle Obama as the driver behind the problem, WTOC reports.

On Monday, parent Lori Brown said her middle school son was offered a choice between garlic French bread or plain noodle with Parmesan, as well as a side: salad, peas, fruit or a fruit sorbet.

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“I was thinking, my child is eating basically a piece of bread with some cheese and a slushy that’s considered a fruit,” Brown told the news site. “These kids are sitting in school trying to focus, trying to excel, trying to learn on very little food and calories.”

Federal lunch restrictions ushered in by the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010, which was imposed on schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program to limit calories in school food based on grade level, with elementary students receiving 550 to 650 calories, about 600 to 650 calories for middle school students, and up to a maximum of 850 calories for high schoolers, WTOC reports.

The restrictions also limit the amount of salt, sugar, fat, and other elements of school food, and require that each student take a fruit or vegetable, whether or not they eat it.

As a result, more than a million students have dropped out of the National School Lunch Program, and the changes have generated well over $1 billion in food waste, mostly vegetables.

Bryan County school officials sympathized with parents’ concerns about the amount and nutrition in school lunches under the new rules, but said there isn’t a lot they can do about it, WTOC reports.

“I don’t believe one size fits all. But these are the requirements and these are the requirements that we are required to follow,” Bryan nutrition director Carole Night told the news site.

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Meanwhile, Brown contends that her active son and other students are “starving when they get home.”

“They’re also asking, ‘what can I eat,’ and they grab the first thing. I can’t keep groceries in the house,” she said. “I only have two kids and I’m constantly at the grocery store buying food.”

She also said there’s no doubt that the unappetizing school lunches are leading to unnecessary waste – both in terms of food and school lunch revenues.

“What I was told is the food is so bland, so lacking in ingredients, so these kids are basically throwing it away,” Brown said. “So the money that is being spent is being wasted.”

Brown and school officials in Bryan County are only the latest to criticize the federal school food restrictions. When the federal regulations first rolled out, students revolted, and some created parody videos and found other creative ways to voice their displeasure with the changes.

Most recently, social media savvy students have taken to posting pictures of their unappetizing lunch “food,” along with the hashtag #thanksmichelleobama.

Last week Maryland student Sara Kep posted an image of six mozzarella sticks and a pile of black beans she received in the lunch line.

Another student, Logan, posted an image of a pile of rice, topped with some sort of meat and a small pile of black beans he believes resembles “rat sh*t.”