Ever wonder why it is such a struggle to get good food in our schools?  We all know what tastes good and what is healthy and sometimes it seems like the food being served in the cafeteria is neither.  With school meals often being the only food some students will eat during the day it should be a high priority to give healthy options in the cafeteria.  However many school districts in Minnesota are struggling to provide quality meals to their students.  The problem?  A lack of proper funding to pay for meals and the workers who prepare them.

Unhealthy food is generally cheaper and as schools are tightening their budgets, their options become limited and the quality of food often goes down.  Also, according to current federal law school food must contain at least a certain number of calories but there is no maximum value for how calorie filled food can be.  In fact, according to a study conducted by the University of Chicago, students who regularly eat school lunch are more likely to be obese than those who pack their own meals. 

With one third of students in Minnesota on free or reduced price lunch programs and eating two to three meals a day in school, the poor options in the cafeteria could easily have a negative impact on the health of the students of lower income families.  Many studies have already linked poverty with obesity and unhealthy school lunches are just adding to the myriad of road blocks to health faced by many lower income students.  When we take a look at the break down of the school food budget it is not surprising schools are not providing their students with better options...in fact it's surprising the food isn't worse than it is.

Minnesota has a complicated system for distributing funds for public schools.  The system is partially based on the concentration of poverty in each school district.  The result is levels of funding per student vary in each region of the state, with more funding going to schools with higher levels of poverty.  Minneapolis receives one of the highest levels of compensatory funding, currently receiving $52.5 million for Minneapolis Public Schools but, after being distributed through different schools and departments, the school food service is just scraping by.

Approximately two thirds of students in the Minneapolis Public Schools are eligible for a free or reduced school lunch.  In Minneapolis funding for school meals is broken down so the government gives the school $2.80 per free lunch, $2.40 for a reduced priced lunch and $0.40 for a paid lunch.  Students who buy their own lunch pay $1.75 which, when added to the forty cents provided by the government, comes to $2.15.  So the money given for the free lunches is also being use to cover the cost of the paid lunches.  According to Nicole Barron, the Food Services Accounting and Business Services Manager for Minneapolis Public Schools in a recent interview with the founder of Simple, Good, and Tasty, only about 40% of this money is spent on the food itself while another 40% covers labor and the remaining 20% for other expenses.

This means the amount of money available to spend on food for each student receiving a free meal is $1.12 per meal while that amount is only $0.86 per meal for paying students.  These numbers are expected to fall even lower this January as the Minneapolis Public Schools' $45 million dollar budget deficit will likely prompt government leaders to reshape the methods of allocating funds and make cuts wherever possible. 

It's easy to see why positive change is so hard to make in the cafeteria when the budget is so tight.  The food service is a separate entity from the rest of the school and the funding it receives is concrete with little leeway for variation.  Everything is a balancing act and to improve in one area will often require a downgrade in another.  For example, if a school decides to switch from breaded chicken patties to non-breaded breast fillets the cost increases 28 cents per meal.  This extra money will have to be taken out somewhere else in the meal, either during preparation or the cost (and inadvertently quality) of other food options being served.  As a result, the quality of each meal often remains stagnant.

If we are going to make positive change in our school cafeterias we are going to have to fight hard for it.  Although looking for healthy alternatives to current food options is a great place to start, it can only go so far when healthy food becomes financially out of reach.  Speak up and stay informed about funding to your school's food service.  Organization like the Minnesota School Nutrition Association and the Minnesota School Food Buying Group are working to keep meals healthy and to reduce the cost of food for school lunches.

• health
• school
• food
• nutrition
• funding