Nutrition in US schools

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), schools across the United States served 4.6 billion lunches in fiscal year 2023. Schools also often provide many students with breakfast and other food, making them a crucial conduit of nutrition for young people. Indeed, experts have estimated that some minors consume roughly half of their daily caloric intake as part of their school lunch. The issue of nutrition in schools has therefore been identified as a key part of overall public health.

School nutrition is seen as especially important given that the United States has one of highest childhood obesity rates of any nation in the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2024, obesity affected one in five US children and adolescents, increasing their risk of developing health problems such as high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. The high volume of weight-related health conditions affecting Americans places a burden on the medical industry and increases health care costs, so much attention has been directed to identifying reasons and potential solutions for childhood obesity. In the early twenty-first century, some critics argued that school lunches were contributing to the problem.

Federal guidelines on school nutrition were heavily revised in 2010 under the administration of President Barack Obama, aiming to make meals healthier. However, the issue became politicized and faced notable backlash. Even as data showed the changes improved nutritional quality for students, the content of school meals continued to generate debate and controversy.

Overview

In 2009 First Lady Michelle Obama advocated a Let’s Move! initiative that sought to curtail childhood obesity across the nation through a combination of increased physical activity and exercise, as well as more healthy food choices for children. Public attention soon focused on the quality and quantity of food served in schools during lunch, a subject that sparked impassioned debate following British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s televised exposé of the lunch served at a Huntington, West Virginia, high school during an episode of his program Food Revolution in early 2010. Oliver reported that the school cafeteria served artificially flavored strawberry milk, instant potatoes, and processed chicken. Two years earlier, Huntington had been designated the Fattest Town in America by virtue of its obesity rate. Additionally, the results of a 2010 study published in the American Heart Journal suggested that children who ate a school lunch daily were 29 percent more likely to be obese than children whose parents packed them lunch, and that regularly eating lunch from a school cafeteria was a greater risk factor for obesity than watching television or playing video games for two hours or more daily.

On December 2, 2010, the Democratic-controlled US Congress passed a bill, called the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, that revised federal guidelines for school lunches by a margin of 264 to 157. The bill called for more fresh fruits and green vegetables and less sodium to be included in lunches and restricted the amount of potatoes—a food rich in starch—that could be served by school cafeterias, which would have drastically cut down on the volume of French fries and potato chips in lunches. The bill also established strict caloric limits, based on grade level, for school meals. Predictably, the passage of this bill and President Obama’s signing it into law generated a considerable degree of criticism and controversy from other political figures and the public. Policymakers from largely agricultural and potato-producing states, such as Idaho, Colorado, and Maine, expressed strong opposition to the bill’s limits on potato products, while others saw the bill as an over-reach of governmental authority that infringed on individuals’ personal freedom. For example, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the Republican Party’s 2008 vice presidential nominee, openly criticized a Pennsylvania proposal to limit the amount of fatty and sugary dessert items, such as cookies and cake, served as part of school lunches in the state by referring to the plan as evidence of a “nanny state run amok.”

Eventually, the federal government modified its new guidelines slightly to rescind its potato restrictions. The finalized version of the revised guidelines required schools to serve twice as many fruits and vegetables, increase the amount of whole grain foods by requiring half of all bread products to be whole grain, increase the amount of low-fat milk, reduce the amount of carbonated beverages, and limit the amount of carbohydrates contained in meals. The new regulations also established a limit of 650 calories per lunch for elementary students, 700 for middle school students, and 850 for high school students.

Nevertheless, the revised guidelines still proved controversial. Health and nutrition experts generally supported these revisions, while certain food industries and elected officials expressed their disapproval. The food industry spent more than five million dollars in opposition to the guidelines. Opposition also stemmed from the increased costs associated with the revised menus, as high-calorie, low-nutrient foods are generally cheaper than healthier and wholesome foods. Experts conceded that the new lunches would increase the price of lunch by approximately fourteen cents. Others criticized the rigid calorie standards, noting that individual appetite and metabolism vary sharply from student to student. Republican congressmen Steve King of Iowa and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas introduced an unsuccessful bill titled the No Kids Hungry Act in September 2012 that called for the repeal of all new guidelines.

Additionally, the lunches proved to be fairly unpopular with many high school and middle school students across the country, with many school officials and students themselves claiming that the revised menus failed to fill students up and left them hungry during the remainder of the school day. Supporters of the revised guidelines criticized this view, however, noting that the increased amount of fiber in lunch should make students feel more full, not less. They also pointed out that since the healthier foods were less popular with students than “junk” food, many students refused to eat their lunches, thus increasing their hunger during afternoon classes. Nevertheless, various school districts in California, Illinois, Indiana, and New York expressed displeasure with the federal guidelines.

In 2014 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) audited the National School Lunch Program after the revised guidelines were issued. The GAO found that one million students and over three hundred school districts dropped the program, that requirements pitted calorie counts against portions, and that costs rose, food waste soared, and staff morale plummeted. However, other studies began to suggest there were positive impacts as well, including a correlation with declines in obesity rates among children living in poverty, who were more likely to get a major portion of their calorie intake from school meal programs. The revised guidelines also prompted further academic research into means of making meals both healthier and more attractive to students. Numerous studies found that students' selection and consumption of fruits and vegetables increased after the act was passed and that the nutritional quality of school food had improved markedly as well. The USDA also offered grants and other resources to school districts as part of the revised guidelines, promoting the use of locally produced foods in school lunches and the implementation of farm-to-school activities to engage students in the local foods movement.

In 2017 Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, part of Donald Trump's presidential administration, announced that schools would no longer have to meet some of the restrictions put in place as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Some nutrition experts, including the chief executive of the American Heart Association, objected to the move. Restrictions were further loosened during the COVID-19 pandemic, which altered the school nutrition landscape among widespread school closures in the US. In 2023, the USDA announced updated nutrition standards to help guide schools following the pandemic, focused on a few areas that had become growing concerns among nutrition experts, parents, and teachers. These included lowering added sugars and weekly sodium limits, encouraging whole-grain products, and using more locally grown foods. That year the USDA also announced a $100 million investment in its Healthy Meals Incentives initiative to further improve the nutritional quality of school meals.

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