Emergency Feeding: new info & resources for schools

Why Healthy Scratch-Cooked Food?

A healthy meal during the school day can help a child’s immune system, mental cognition, behavior issues, improve attendance, and better focus while in school, which directly improves academic performance.

More families than ever are facing food insecurity in our country, and we need to step in and be that force that helps provide them with much-needed access to fresh fruits and vegetables, high-quality proteins, and a hot comforting meal.

By cooking from scratch, a school lunch program has the ability to choose products and ingredients that go into recipes. You can better control the quantity of fat, salt, and sugar that goes into a dish, which means the final product is healthier for your students. You can choose to source where you are buying ingredients from, which means you have the ability to make an impact on local economies and the environment.

Cooking from scratch can be cheaper than buying pre-packaged, convenient style food, and what school lunch program is not concerned about their bottom line? Most importantly, continuing to cook from scratch provides better tasting dishes. It’s something you and your staff can feel proud of. When you hand over a homemade meal to a student, it can create a touching connection in an otherwise difficult time in a student’s life.

Cooking During COVID

To help schools cook during this pandemic, we’re adding a new content section on The Lunch Box called “Emergency Feeding.”

As you may know, The Lunch Box is school food’s trusted source for scratch cooking — including free resource downloads and hundreds of recipes for school food operations. We’ve created a new area specifically addressing emergency feeding plans, to-go scratch cook recipes, and food access. Here’s just a few of our favorite new resources:

Check out these resources & more over on The Lunch Box! We hope this section will continue to support districts in serving healthy food, even during emergency feeding situations.