the food when I flew. I don’t know if that was just microwave quality food or good. Hard to say when your that age.
As an adult I don’t recall food being really good- there were things I liked. I’m much bigger now so I can accurately compare seat and leg room now vs then. I believe there’s more options of flights now and flights are significantly less expensive. Even if your scraping by many can still afford to travel. That wasn’t the case years ago.