Background: Incorporating scratch-cooked, organic, and locally grown foods into school meal programs can enhance meal quality and support local food systems. Methods: 430 California school food authorities were surveyed to (1) evaluate their use of scratch-cooked, organic, and locally grown foods in their programs; (2) identify demographic and…

Congressional Republicans are reportedly considering spending cuts to balance the cost of extending the tax cuts they enacted in 2017. One proposal is to raise the eligibility threshold for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), which lets schools provide federally reimbursed free meals to all students. This change would cut the number of…

Background: School meals were served free of charge to all public school students in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, but some students still did not participate. Methods: In this mixed-methods study, surveys and interviews were conducted with food service directors (FSDs) from California (n = 556 surveys; n = 29 interviews) and…

Breakfast skipping in young people has been strongly associated with reduced cognitive performance and school grades, attendance and disciplinary concerns, reduced health and well-being, and an increased risk of obesity. The school breakfast program (SBP) was implemented to improve nutrition and diet quality for all school-aged children and teens.…

This report summarizes findings from the School Meals Operations Study (SMO), part of an ongoing series to assess school meal operations on a school year (SY) basis. This volume of the study covers July 2021 through the end of September 2022 and includes SY 2021-2022. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, the Families First Coronavirus…

The US Department of Agriculture runs a large array of farm and food subsidy programs. The school lunch and breakfast programs are two of the largest, which together with related school food programs will cost federal taxpayers an estimated $35 billion in 2025. Thirty million children, about 58 percent of students in public schools, receive school…

The federal government has a long history of investing in programs for feeding children, starting with federal aid for school lunch programs in the 1930s. Today, federal child nutrition programs support food served to children in schools and a variety of other settings. This report starts with an overview of child nutrition programs' funding…