My friend's exact word from all combat deployments (Sword/Shield/Freedom) "The food wasn't always hot, rearly good, but always enough!"he also mentioned his old heads can't remember a time it was this bad.

By your own explanation your buddy is talking about how it's supposed to be and how it was not how it is, we can see how it is and how it's been and that's a graph that skews downward not upward.