The Politics Behind the Decline of School Nutrition

Government regulated school nutrition reaches back to WWII in the U.S., when undernourished young men had a hard time meeting the military’s requirements during the draft. This resulted in nutritious lunches to be served to public school students across the country. 

Since then, the federal government has had control over the lunches public schools provide each day, providing guidelines and even determining funding. With this government oversight comes many of the same typical partisan political issues, leading to sometimes drastic changes in school lunch policy from administration to administration.  

There are also plenty of interested parties when it comes to school lunch. Parents, school officials, special interest groups, health organizations, school-lunch directors, food industry lobbyists, and politicians all have a stake in the debate over school nutrition. This leads to questionable compromises in our children’s nutrition, such as classifying ketchup and pizza as vegetables. 

The most recent major change to the school lunch program came under the Obama administration with the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. After seeing the decline in the nutritional value of school lunches, the administration sought to bring healthy food to all public school students, regardless of their financial means. 

For decades before this, schools turned toward processed foods over fresh foods to save on the lunch budget. More recently, some school districts have invited fast food companies to set up alongside the school lunch line under the guise of offering options and cutting costs. These choices undermine attempts to provide children with healthy, nutritious foods and can lead to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. 

The Obama administration had hoped to reverse this trend and put emphasis back on the health of America’s children by reducing the use of processed foods, lowering sodium levels, and increasing servings of fresh foods and vegetables. 

There was pushback from school-lunch directors who found it hard to meet these stricter guidelines within their budgets and from food industry associations whose members stood to lose from changes in school lunch menus. In the war over healthy food in the cafeteria, the most significant battle is cost versus nutrition. 

Under President Trump, the U.S. Department of Agriculture decided to ease Obama era regulations promoting the use of whole grains and cutting back on sodium, meaning school lunches may be falling short of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. 

However, one of the biggest reasons healthy school lunches fail isn’t political. It is that students too often make the choice for poorer food options. When faced with healthier school meals, students often decide to bring their meals from home or go out for fast food. Without students purchasing school lunches, healthy school lunch programs are doomed to fail. 

Educating children while they are young about the importance of eating well, including knowing the source of their food and the advantages of a natural diet, can prevent them from making the poor choices that can lead to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and a range of other health issues now and later in life. 

Some schools have started integrating school gardens into their educational programs. These gardens help students to understand our food cycles, show them biology in action, and connect them directly to their local ecosystems with hands-on experience. The food produced by the garden can also be used in the cafeteria to increase access to nutritious foods while reducing costs. 

Holistic approaches to school nutrition such as this can offset the tight budgets most schools contend with and promote a healthier dietary lifestyle for our children. Best of all, they can be a bipartisan way to get nutritious foods in front of students every day.