School Food
- mfulk78
- 6 hours ago
- 5 min read
School Based Nutrition - Why is it happening this way?
There is a quiet experiment happening in American childhood, and we should stop pretending it’s benign.
In the 1970s and 1980s, when I attended school, school food was far from perfect, but it existed in the context of something essential: it was mostly prepared on site, minimally processed (but changing in that direction) and not laden with additives and chemicals (Yet). Oh, and most children still ate meals prepared at home at almost every other occasion. Dinner wasn’t aspirational or Instagram-worthy, but it was routine. Real food. Cooked by someone who knew the child, at a table where nervous systems could downshift. School lunch was a supplement to that structure, not the metabolic foundation of a child’s life. That has all changed in a short 50 years. Mirroring the change in weight and childhood disease prevalence.
• 1970s – some processed foods begin to enter school cafeterias at scale
• 1980s – preservatives and additives become routine
• 1990s – ultra-processed foods dominate
In 1994, new standards were added: This table lays out how much of each food group schools were supposed to offer over a week under the 1994 standards. These were the first nutrition-focused meal standards the USDA put into place:
For Breakfast (all grades K–12):
· Fruit: 2.5 cups/week
· Vegetables: 0 cups/week
· Grains/Bread: 0–10 oz equivalent/week (depending on combinations of grains and protein)
· Meat/Meat-alternative: 0–10 oz equivalent/week
· Milk: 5 cups/week
For Lunch (split by grade levels):
· Fruit: K–3 also 2.5 cups; grades 4–12 get 3.75 cups/week
· Vegetables: still 0 cups/week (no separate vegetable requirement yet)
· Grains/Bread: at least 8 oz eq/week
· Meat/Meat-alternative: 7.5 oz eq/week for breakfast; 10 oz eq/week for lunch
· Milk: 5 cups/week
(Hopkins 2015)
What’s notable, reflected in the structure of this table, is that vegetables weren’t required at all yet, and the standards were very much food-group based, not ingredient-level nutrient quality checks. That created space for schools to rely on industrially produced entrées and sides that technically met volumes of grains or proteins but could still be ultra-processed products with long ingredient lists, many of these foods would meet a NOVA class 4 classification (the worst type). Think fruit cup in sugary syrup.
Fast forward to today. For many children, school food is the diet. The main source of their sustenance. Ultra-processed breakfasts grabbed on the way out the door are followed by the same at school. Many of my patients eat twice before 10 am. Packaged lunches follow. Engineered for shelf life, dopamine hits, and cost for cash strapped schools. Dinners replaced by drive-throughs, delivery apps, or snack plates masquerading as meals. We have swapped cooking for convenience and then act surprised when children’s bodies and brains begin to misfire.
This isn’t nostalgia. It’s physiology.
Lustig, Johnson, Katz, Allison, Guyenet speak to the reality of food induced human dysfunction. Ultra-processed foods destabilize blood sugar, disrupt satiety signaling, inflame the gut, and alter the developing brain’s reward circuitry. Children do not just show up heavier, they are irritabile, impulsive, have poor emotional regulation, sleep disruption, anxiety, and learning difficulties. We label these children with diagnoses, often accurately, but we rarely interrogate the metabolic environment we’ve placed them in. The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends GLP1 drugs for adolescent obese disease at an exorbitant cost. Money spent on real food is better advocacy.
Recently, I cared for a 10-year-old boy with asthma, acutely ill with influenza, and carrying diagnoses of ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, and level 1 autism. His symptoms worsen dramatically with his diet of highly processed foods, minimal protein, almost no fiber, and frequent sugar exposure. His single father is exhausted. He is trying to manage medications, school demands, behavioral escalations, and now a sick child whose nervous system is already running hot. This is not a failure of parenting. This is a system failure.
When metabolism is unstable, the brain cannot regulate itself. A child cannot “try harder” to focus when their glucose is crashing or conversely skyrocketing. They cannot access executive function when inflammation is amplifying threat signals. They cannot learn effectively when sleep is fragmented and neurotransmitter balance is compromised by nutrient-poor food. We keep asking children to succeed in environments that undermine the very biology required for success.
The contrast with previous generations isn’t moral, it’s structural. Families cooked because food systems hadn’t yet externalized cooking to corporations. School meals were recognizable as food. Children moved more, ate fewer additives, and consumed sugar as an occasional event rather than a constant drip. Mental health struggles existed, but the baseline metabolic load was lower.
If we are serious about children’s mental health, academic success, and long-term resilience, food has to return to the center of the conversation. Not as blame. As support. Teaching families how to cook again. Improving school food quality. Recognizing that behavior is downstream from biology.
Children are not broken. Their food environment is. And until we address that, we will keep asking overwhelmed parents and dysregulated kids to carry a burden that never should have been theirs.
From a recent article in Pediatrics: "For the first time in decades, there is consensus that the food system is making us sick, offering an unprecedented opportunity for legislation to create a healthier food system and promote evidence-based food policies that support children’s health. The “Make Our Children Healthy Again” report and strategy outline several approaches to minimize ultraprocessed food consumption among US children. The MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) call to action builds in part on the Biden administration’s “National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health” and is a response to the distressing fact that ultraprocessed foods (UPF) are increasingly replacing fresh, nutrient-dense foods like produce, whole grains, and lean proteins in children’s diets. UPF comprises ingredients seldom found in home kitchens and is engineered to be hyperpalatable with addictive flavor combinations and textures."(Cataltepe 2025)
Improving children’s nutrition in the U.S. requires closing the FDA’s GRAS loophole, which currently allows manufacturers to self-approve thousands of food additives without rigorous safety review, many of which are linked to developmental, endocrine, and metabolic harm. While the FDA has begun banning certain dyes and proposing stronger oversight, lasting change will require congressional action, with states already stepping in to restrict additives long banned in Europe. At the same time, the U.S. needs clear, interpretive front-of-package labeling, like Chile’s stop-sign system or Europe’s Nutri-Score, which has proven effective at reducing consumption of unhealthy foods, especially among children. Finally, food marketing directed at children must be curtailed, as it powerfully manipulates preferences during critical developmental periods and has been deemed a human rights issue by UNICEF. Together, these reforms can be implemented through school food policy, but recent federal funding cuts make parent and pediatrician advocacy essential to protect and improve the diets of America’s children. (Cataltepe 2025)
And now we finally have new and clear food guidelines!
It amazes me that these guidelines fall along partizan lines. Food is not political. It is health. Health is not political. From HHS: The Dietary Guidelines are a whole food framework intended to be customized to individuals and families, and their needs, preferences, and financial status. The guidance provides possibilities across all recommendations. For example, in proteins, options such as chicken, pork, beans, and legumes; a larger variety of dairy products, at all price points, including whole milk and full-fat dairy products; fresh, frozen, dried, and canned fruits and vegetables, from beets to strawberries, carrots to apples; and whole grains. Paired with a reduction in highly processed foods laden with refined carbohydrates, added sugars, excess sodium, unhealthy fats, and chemical additives, this approach can change the health trajectory of America.
Finally - common sense like Thomas Payne would have enjoyed!
Dr. M
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