Los Angeles, August 27: School lunch is back on the U.S. policy menu for the first time in decades, thanks to President Barack Obama’s drive to make school food more nutritious and healthy.
Like any reform effort in Washington these days, the school lunch overhaul is vulnerable to a growing government deficit. But some companies and investors are getting in the game early with small projects that could some day grow into big business catering to millions of school children.
The U.S. government pays much of the bill for school food. Efforts to replace the processed and nutrition-poor foods still on many student lunch trays come with a higher price tag that many schools cannot afford. Businesses can help close the gap.
U.S. natural foods grocer Whole Foods Market Inc (WFMI.O) has teamed with Chef Ann Cooper — best known for her high-profile partnership with Chef Alice Waters at Berkeley Unified School District — to launch the Lunch Box project (thelunchbox.org/), an expanding online guidebook to help school “lunch ladies” serve healthier food.
Other efforts focus on outsourcing.
Privately held Revolution Foods, which delivers health-focused, made-from-scratch lunches, breakfasts and snacks to schools around California, got $6.5 million to expand into Colorado and Washington, D.C., bringing its total venture funding thus far to $17 million.
President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama — who planted a vegetable garden on White House grounds, hired a chef focused on healthy fare and have two school-aged daughters — are expected to buoy reform efforts.
President “Obama actually said the words ‘school lunch’ and ‘health’ in the same paragraph,” said Cooper. “The last time a President talked about school lunch, it was Reagan talking about making ketchup a vegetable.”
While concern over rising obesity rates — which put kids at risk of having shorter lives than their parents — has fueled some policy changes, the lunchroom battle rages on.
U.S. schools are banning junk food and sugary beverages. Many want to serve more fresh fruits and vegetables and hormone- and antibiotic-free meat and dairy. Those cost more than processed food and government-supplied commodities.
The federal government has raised its reimbursement for free school lunches to $2.68 from $2.57 last school year, but after labor and other expenses, most schools are left with $1 or less per lunch to spend on food.
That’s why Cooper and Whole Foods’ Lunch Box project has put a priority on tips to help schools stretch every penny.
The pressure is on Cooper to deliver because the higher-quality food used in lunches at the Berkeley Schools sent per-meal ingredient costs to around $1.40, an expense that was offset with money from Waters’ Chez Panisse Foundation.
This year, Cooper has taken up residence in Boulder, Colorado, where she expects food costs to be around $1.20 per lunch.
—Agencies