The meals during basic were okay. They started out terrible but got better as BCT progressed. I distinctly remember 4th of July being the best, since they gave us 15 minutes instead of the regular 10. The meal that day was cheeseburgers and curly fries for dinner, and a fried chicken sandwich for lunch. On any other day, everyone stuffed their plates so full that we would always ask for extra trays of food from cadre tables. There were plenty of snacks, like chips, bars, fruit, and Nutella. At Jack's the food was surprisingly good (gained 4 pounds from Jack's.) However, I would say during the academic year I get hungry A LOT. Minutes and MAF do not end until 6:55 AM and class starts at 7:30. For me, I don't want to be running all the way to Mitch's, then wait in a long line, and potentially be late running up the stairs in Fairchild for my class. So I just skip breakfast and run to Fairchild earlier. We also have squad pushups, 25 each time you enter or leave squad, so I leave before 7:00 AM to avoid doing those. You can store snacks in your room though. At lunch, the upperclassmen ask you to tell jokes, fun facts, ask you what the meal is, ask you why you're smiling, so you never really eat as much as you want. But then when dinner comes, you eat as much as you can with no time constraint. They even have non-dairy frozen yogurt every other day! My tip is to get it in a cup with two cones (so you end up getting two cones after scooping the frozen yogurt into the cone
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Edit: Also forgot to add that there is a salad bar for lunch and dinner and a yogurt bar at brunch during the academic year.