By Kara D. Ryan, Senior Research Analyst, Health Policy Project
About a year ago, I found myself getting nostalgic for school lunch. I was touring the kitchen of La Fe Preparatory School in El Paso, Texas, a bilingual public charter school located just blocks from the U.S.-Mexico border. It’d been a while since I’d been in an elementary school cafeteria (the last time was probably in the 1980s when the Cold War was still raging and the pull-down maps of Eastern Europe in my grade school classrooms looked much different than they do now). The colorful plastic trays, pint-sized milk cartons, and kid-sized tables and chairs brought me back to the lunch lines of my childhood.
That day, Randi Marshall, the kitchen manager at La Fe Prep, was giving me a first-hand look at what goes into serving a hot, healthy lunch to the students. She showed me the industrial-sized mixers and ovens, explaining that she and her team make nearly every meal from scratch. As we talked, students streamed through the line excited for the day’s offering: spaghetti, broccoli, yellow squash with chili and lime, and low-fat milk. It was clear that more than just the maps have changed since my time in elementary school; the cafeteria meals have also had an overhaul.
In response to a movement to improve the nutritional content of school-based meals, policies and practices are changing at the federal, state, and community levels. For instance, farm-to-school initiatives focused on bringing local, healthy foods to school kitchens grew from a handful of pilot projects in the late 1990s to thousands of programs currently operational in all 50 states. Schools like La Fe Prep have been increasingly finding ways to make nutritious foods more appealing and accessible to kids by preparing fresh meals, integrating ingredients and flavors from students’ diverse cultural backgrounds, and providing healthy, low-cost recipes for families to prepare at home.
These changes are exciting for all kids, but especially for low-income Latino children. The sad fact is that one in three Latino families with children at home don’t know or aren’t certain where the next meal is coming from, compared to about one in seven White households where children are present. Latino kids, unfortunately, are among the most at risk of both going hungry and being overweight or obese—and evidence suggests that the two are linked. For many kids, breakfast or lunch at school is the healthiest meal (or the only meal) that a child eats during the day. Making sure that these children get fed and that the meals at school are getting healthier is critical to ensure that their bodies and brains are growing and functioning at their best.
That’s why NCLR was thrilled when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced the final nutrition standards for school meals. Last revamped in 1994, the standards now emphasize putting more fruits, veggies, whole grains, and fat-free or low-fat dairy on school cafeteria menus, ensuring age-appropriate calorie levels and portion sizes, and further reducing unhealthy fat and sodium content. We applaud standards that will help all schoolchildren, especially our most vulnerable, to have better access to healthy foods.
Want to know more about the school meal standards? Our friends at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) held a webinar about the changes on February 2, but if you missed it, you can fill out your free registration and replay the archived footage.
To find out whether a child in your life is eligible for free or reduced-cost school meals, contact the child’s school at any time throughout the school year. Need an application in a language other than English? USDA has application package prototypes available in 33 languages on its website if your state or school has not made them available.
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