School cafeterias in America serve 45 million meals a day. If they were a restaurant chain, it would be the largest in the country.
But no restaurant chain operates under the constraints the school lunchroom has to. Customers (in this case, students) rarely pay more than $3.80 for lunch. The management (in this case, the federal government) restricts added sugar and salt, and requires that foods like bread and pasta be at least 50 percent whole grain. Every meal must offer a serving of milk, and everyone, from President Trump to parents, is a critic.
For all that, school-cafeteria food still sells. The number of children eating lunch at school jumped by 5 percent in the last school year, according to an April study by the Food Research & Action Center. More children qualified for free or reduced-price meals, too.
The new school year brings some tighter nutritional standards, and limits food purchased from other countries, like bananas, to 10 percent of what’s served. Menus are under new scrutiny from the “Make America Healthy Again” arm of the Trump administration. Dozens of states are working to eliminate artificial food dyes and other additives. School nutrition directors are bracing for the impact of federal budget cuts and updated federal dietary guidelines, which could be issued this month, and set the direction of school food for the next five years.
And then there is the biggest challenge of all: how to satisfy the fast-changing tastes of a generation of food-savvy children.
Here’s a look at what’s new in the lunch line.
A Ceiling on Sugar
Yogurt, milk and cereal in school lunchrooms will contain less sugar this year, as part of a new set of federal regulations. A cup of chocolate milk, for example, can have only 10 grams or less of added sugar. By 2027, only 10 percent of the calories in a week’s worth of meals will be allowed to come from added sugar.
The change is a significant moment in a saga that goes back to the Obama administration’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which set limits on sodium and required more whole grains. Flavored milk had to be fat-free, and unflavored milk only 1 percent fat. In 2018, the Trump administration relaxed those standards and allowed flavored low-fat milk back into schools without any limits on sugar or calories. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. reworked the plan, this time adding limits on sugar.
Other new rules give districts leeway to make meals more culturally inclusive, use more locally grown food and to swap out meat with legumes, tofu and other alternative protein sources. And now states are adding restrictions. West Virginia schools are the first in the nation to be free of artificial food dyes, and stopped serving some popular chips and cereals. California was the first state to prohibit the dyes in school food, but that law doesn’t take effect until 2027.
The changes may seem simple, but they can be a challenge. The cost of food is rising faster than the federal school lunch reimbursement rate, and schools are facing labor shortages, said Stephanie Dillard, president of the School Nutrition Association and the child nutrition director for the nine-school district in Enterprise, Ala.
Districts are working toward meeting the guidelines, but school kitchens can’t turn on a dime, Ms. Dillard said. Some schools serve breakfast in the classroom, she said, and rely on items that are easy to hand out and eat at a desk, like packaged pancakes that are high in sugar and sodium. “You can’t just serve grits and eggs in a classroom,” she said.
Cooking From Scratch
Cooking from scratch is one way to make school food healthier, and more districts are trying to bring it back after economic pressures and looser federal standards in the 1980s resulted in an era of heat-and-eat meals. The push to replace heat-and-serve entrees with meals prepared with fresh ingredients geared up in the late 1990s, driven by parents and teachers who wanted school gardens and healthier meals. Those efforts were later championed by Michelle Obama and led to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.
About three-quarters of all school meal programs in the United States now offer some kind of scratch-cooked entree either daily or weekly, according to the latest annual trend report from the School Nutrition Association, which represents 50,000 public and private school nutrition professionals.
“Most of the old heat-and-serve generation of cooks have left, and you have a new generation of school food service directors, educators and parents who care about this,” said the chef Ann Cooper, who in 2009 used $10,000 from her checking account to start a foundation dedicated to bringing scratch cooking back to schools. The Chef Ann Foundation is now a $23 million operation that helps districts, training staff, analyzing school food operations and providing equipment like salad bars and bulk milk dispensers.
But many districts don’t have the equipment or trained labor to proof rolls or roast chickens, so some use techniques called “speed scratch” or “fresh prep.” That might mean buying prepared pizza crusts and sauce, but assembling and baking the pizzas at the school, or using commercially prepared sauce for pasta but roasting the vegetables. In Tampa, Fla., schools buy whole wheat Cuban bread from one local business and prepared meatballs from another, then make hot meatball subs.
A Versatile Noodle
Talk to almost any school food nutrition director and they’ll say Woodles are the most exciting new thing to hit the cafeteria this year. The dried ramen noodles, made by a South Carolina company, were created specifically for school food service, with enough whole wheat to satisfy federal nutrition requirements. They cook quickly and hold well, making them perfect for steamy bowls of soup topped with a boiled egg and vegetables, or as a base for stir-fried dishes. And they help cafeterias in their quest to mimic the kinds of restaurants students prefer — whether a ramen bar, a Chipotle line or yogurt parfaits packaged to look like something you’d grab at Starbucks.
Two Generation Z favorites — spices and sauces — are big this year. Chartwells, one of the largest school food service management companies in the United States, is offering school meals built on dips. Breakfast might include French toast sticks with blueberry cream cheese dip. For lunch, students can dip chicken strips into Sriracha honey mustard, pesto or sweet-and-sour sauce.
California schools sprinkle Tajín on fruit and vegetables. Tikka masala is showing up on school menus in Pennsylvania, and schools in North Texas are making their own kimchi for Korean barbecue tacos.
Giving Students a Say
Schools continue to expand taste-testing panels and recipe competitions to give students more say about what’s on their plates. In New York City, where 900,000 public school meals are served each day, groups of students visit the district’s food and nutrition headquarters in Long Island City, Queens, several times a month to rate new recipes and products the district is considering.
“We have a new chickpea masala recipe, and we have a honey, garlic and chicken bite recipe,” said Christopher Tricarico, the senior executive director of the schools’ Office of Food & Nutrition Services. “Those were tested with kids. We got their feedback and their ratings to make sure that those things should be on our menus.”
Some schools take the Costco approach. FLIK Independent School Dining, a food service company that serves private and public schools in more than 30 states, sets up samples of one ingredient in both a sweet and a savory preparation each month to determine what students prefer. Quinoa might come with Parmesan and pesto, or be turned into breakfast bite with maple and cinnamon.
Restaurant Style
Seating areas and serving lines are being remodeled to look like college dining halls or food courts. Schools are adding booths, artwork and high-top tables, and getting rid of long cafeteria tables with fixed seating.
“We’re mirroring that kind of quick-serve retail environment so it helps drive more engagement and more excitement,” said Ashley Kakas, a senior vice president at Chartwells.
New York City has dedicated $150 million over the next five years to renovating cafeteria serving lines and adding new furniture and local artwork. The district recently finished a $125 million renovation project that improved 250 schools.
Buying Local
In March, the Trump administration canceled a $660 million program that schools relied on to buy locally produced items like ground beef and seasonal fruits and vegetables.
Without extra money, many schools can’t afford local food, which can cost more than the subsidized offerings from the Department of Agriculture. Many cafeterias aren’t equipped or staffed to turn local ground beef into hamburgers or clean and cut cases of fresh vegetables.
Still, many school nutrition directors continue to try to use as much locally grown food as possible. In the recent School Nutrition Association survey, 70 percent of districts reported offering local food on a daily or weekly basis.
In Alabama, where the state pays for some local ingredients, Ms. Dillard held a shrimp boil with Gulf shrimp, and uses local lettuce for the salad bar. She buys satsumas in the winter and strawberries in the spring, and recently received a delivery of butternut squash from a farmer who cut and peeled it for her.
It’s often easier for smaller districts to use local food than big ones. New York City is committed to making sure that at least 15 percent of the food it serves comes from the region, but there isn’t enough local butternut squash consistently available to prepare dishes like the butternut squash macaroni and cheese the district serves alongside apple-glazed chicken.
“We want to make sure that we’re having as much local product,” Mr. Tricarico said. “But we’re also going to be serving 600,000 of those trays.”
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Kim Severson is an Atlanta-based reporter who covers the nation’s food culture and contributes to NYT Cooking.
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