I recently took a couple of trips in AA economy, and have very mixed feelings about the food.
Most notably, on a JFK-LHR round trip, I found the dinner offerings (both were evening flights) appalling. I think the outbound was supposed to be steak, but on the return I asked for a tray sans entree---and the F/A who served me, nodding grimly, didn't seem the least bit surprised. I don't mean to bash AA food across the board,but these dinners were as bad as any joke-inspiring airline food I've come across over the years. No lamb chops or risotto here, that's for sure! The sides weren't a whole lot better: soggy salad, and cloying dessert with too much icing, as usual. I subsisted on cheese, crackers, and the standard-issue rock-hard roll.
The pre-arrival snacks, on the other hand, were quite good. The breakfast on the outbound had a pastry and yogurt, which I always like (it's hard to mess up!), and the pizza on the return, though hardly award-winning, was perfectly edible.
My other trip was LGA-ORD-ABQ-STL-LGA, so no food service at all. However, I really like the cheddar snack mix. I'm not a fan of peanuts, and pretzels get boring after a while, so I always look forward to that stuff.
Frankly, I'd rather have a couple of bags of snack mix and bring my own sandwich (or be served a box of cereal, yogurt, mini-pizza, or other tasty snack) than see AA wasting money on crappy food like the stuff I was served on the London flights or those Bistro Bags (are those still around?). I know people expect to be fed a real meal on 7-hour flights, but as far as I'm concerned, there comes a point where serving bad food is worse than nothing at all.
On a final note, I like how AA gives a choice of Coke and Pepsi, but I MISS DR. PEPPER! It was a dark day when, post-9/11, I asked for my favorite beverage---which I could always count on when flying AA---only to be told by the sympathetic F/A that it was no longer.