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No, you posted leftist propaganda, the equivalent of me posting a Glen Beck video from his crazy 2010s era, as a source.
The Cato study you linked isn't focused on some sort of EA evaluation of QOL/$ because doing something like that for an anti-poverty program is hopelessly confounded. This is why you should easily know the "40 billion dollars for 18 billion in spending" is ridiculous propaganda. Also, it appears to understate actual spending on these programs by between $9 and $80 billion depending on the source.
I have now read the main report from Rockefeller, and it is just full of conclusory language. So now I must read the model. The tech report is similarly full of just conclusions with no evidence to support them. They say the lunches save people in poverty money by calculating the cost of producing the same meals for a private household. This is, of course, absurd. They attribute greater future earnings to the recipients of school lunches AND reduced criminality. Again, just bald assertions. The claims continue in this fashion.
The whole exercise of fisking my priors has just been a waste of my time, as my prior that the Rockafeller report would be leftist nonsense was proven correct via a painstaking process of reading an incredibly poorly prepared report and technical supplement that should have gotten a failing grade in and freshman statistics course. Of course, in other fields it would be given stellar grades, because those other academic fields are just about producing things that re-enforce the narrative, which this "study" certainly does.
NIH has done a study that shows that any study (like the one above) that assumes kids are even eating the meals is dubious. Some are, some aren't. There is no evidence that the ones that are, are the one's whos parents wouldn't have packed a meal, which IS an essential element of proving the efficacy of the program. You need to prove there are lots of kids who have parents that cant afford an apple and a sandwich that are eating, as a result of the food program, something healthy. If they discard the broccoli you give them and eat the chips you've proven nothing. If my kid or someone like him eats the broccoli you have again proven nothing.
Overall, a government spending program needs to prove its effectiveness to a much higher degree to be justified in its continuance. School lunches aren't getting close. Its not a mystery why school lunches are a big push: Public schools are already a giant left wing boondoggle, but they are also a 3rd rail so they aren't going away. Why not append another couple hundred billion of subsidies into that ecosystem? It just pours back into the right coffers after all.
Imagine arguing with this kind of evidence in favor of free ammunition program. You'd be laughed at by yourself. But at least the ammo isn't going to be thrown away and make kids fat.
I hate to concede this because /u/The_Nybbler behaved in such poor faith, but on the basis of your critiques of the model, and the study you linked about the food wasting question-- you have successfully convinced me that school lunches are not a net economic benefit. I went to the trouble of finding the source, and you eventually went through the trouble of looking through it to point out the problems therein-- just as I'd asked. I can't find a counterforce with better quality evidence, so you win.
Did we really have to go through the whole rigamarole of you insisting that any source that disagrees with you can be dismissed because it's leftist propaganda? We're on a debate forum. If someone posts a glen beck video as a source the correct response is to counter it on its merits and only then dismiss, ignore, and ban the poster if they continue to be an idiot.
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Among actual schoolkids, school lunches are considered somewhere between "literally inedible" and "prison food." Occasionally there's a Friday special that the kids consider tasty, but most of the food is significantly lower quality than anything someone would pay for on the open market.
It got worse after Michelle Obama's reforms; suddenly even the white bread that people found edible became nasty whole wheat versions that were much less appetizing. I think if we want to make school lunches more nutritious, the first thing to do would be to stop making them slop and actually make them something a human being would want to eat.
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