In 2022, The Lancet, a British peer-reviewed journal with a focus on global public health, published a short article with the title: “Unhealthy school meals: A solution to hunger or a problem for health?” As the report laid out, providing school meals is an important measure in preventing food insecurity as nearly 30 million children receive a free or reduced-cost breakfast and lunch on an average American school day, and many of those students rely on school meals as their main source of nutrition.
Yet while those meals meet federal nutrition mandates, they are often simply composed of a smattering of processed foods — breakfast cereal, fruit juice, chicken nuggets, corn dogs, frozen pizza — served alongside a fruit or vegetable and carton of dairy milk. “In fact, the official meal dietary guidelines do not discourage serving pizza or corn dogs, as long as the nutritional specifications (total calorie, sugar, fat, and salt content) are met,” the report said.
