The Catch-22 of the National School Lunch Program

With the institution of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, school systems that receive funding from the National School Lunch Program are required to meet more stringent nutritional guidelines in their cafeteria meals in order for each individual school to receive funding and reimbursement for the food served in their breakfast and lunch programs. However, these new changes have received backlash from school administrators, students, and parents alike, leading to a lack of participation in the program by school systems and therefore limiting students’ access to a nutritious lunch everyday.

For school administrators, the regional systemic structure hinders the actual implementation of the National School Lunch Program. The current system in place when administering the National School Lunch Program is to have one area manager in charge of creating the menus for multiple schools within a county or district. In smaller districts with fewer schools under their jurisdiction, this may not be detrimental because the area manager will easily be able to create rapport with each individual school cafeteria, but larger school districts are inherently hindered. The managers currently in charge of large school districts are unable to provide the attention individual schools need to implement the new guidelines successfully. Additionally, the costliness of providing fresh produce at each meal provides an obstacle in implementing these new dietary guidelines, especially in low-income, low-access rural and urban areas throughout the country. Besides cost, these school districts also struggle with the issue of accessibility, simply because food that meets these nutritional guidelines is harder to procure in some areas, a status now recognized by the USDA as being a “food desert.” Finally, administrators claim that the new food being served does not provide as much energy or satisfaction for students, which ends up affecting their academic performances because of their lack of energy due to lower calorie, more nutrient-dense lunches.

Besides school administrators, parents have also been highly critical of the program, saying that the lunches that are being served are not significantly different from what was being served before the implementation of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, therefore finding the new guidelines to be ineffective. Because no difference is noted, parents cannot tell how schools are making a move to create more nutritious meal options for their students. Although they support the desire to create more nutritious meals for students, they do not see these goals being actualized. Parents are passing this negative attitude on to their children, who are also reacting negatively to the more nutritious meal options being served. In one instance, at a school in California, the new healthy lunches being served were described as “tasting like vomit” by students. Because of the lack of support by their parents, children are also not reacting positively. Additionally, there is a lack of understanding by the students as to how the food that they are being served is nutritionally superior to what they were being served before.

With all of these negative responses to the newly revised National School Lunch Program, it is time to determine how nutritious food can become more accessible to schools while also determining how to increase support for the program amongst school administrators, parents, and students. A full evaluation of the implementation of the program needs to be conducted in order to find better practices of executing the NSLP.