Fueling Student Health

Through healthy school meals and lunchroom education, students can develop healthy eating habits that will stick with them throughout their lives. Scratch cooking enables schools to choose the ingredients that go into students’ meals. Healthier ingredients lead to healthier students:

• Swapping processed foods for real ingredients increases fiber intake. Fiber is considered part of a healthy diet because it keeps you full, keeps your gut healthy and can help you maintain a healthy weight while lowering the risk of diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.
• When foods are processed—refined grains for example—they often lose much of their nutritional value. Scratch cooking with minimally processed ingredients ensures that kids are getting the key nutrients their bodies need to grow.
• Several studies suggest a link between a healthy diet and improved mental health.
• Choosing ingredients gives schools the ability to reduce added sugars in school meals. Added sugars offer no nutrients and can lead to obesity (and poor heart health) when over-consumed.

Fostering Academic Success

Higher-quality diets and scratch cooked school meals promote learning. Well-nourished children have better school attendance rates, exhibit fewer behavioral problems, and are more engaged in the classroom (source). A healthy diet sets students up for long-term success by contributing to better grades and test scores as well as improved cognitive function and longer attention spans.

Feeding Equity

In 2020, over three-quarters of school lunches were served at the free or reduced price. By serving scratch cooked meals in schools, we can ensure that all kids have access to healthy food, no matter their family’s economic situation.

Cooking for a Healthier Planet

A cook-from-scratch model gives schools the flexibility to run a more sustainable meal program. For example, districts can alter their procurement practices to purchase locally grown produce or alter preparation techniques to reduce food waste. In addition to lowering school food’s impact on the environment, sustainable lunchrooms offer a variety of learning opportunities for students.

Scratch cooking supports more student-inspired menus. 

Instead of limiting menu options to pre-packaged offerings, scratch cooking allows schools to cater menus to their student population. This can include using more traditional ingredients and recipes that reflect students’ collective heritages, which can further enhance social learning and contribute to fostering a welcoming and integrated student community.

Creating Career Opportunities

School food services offer a viable career opportunity for culinary students outside of the restaurant industry. A career in school foods allows individuals to support transformative change within the school food system while also providing opportunities for personal career growth. School food careers provide a pathway for better pay, better benefits, and more opportunity for career advancement. Improved school food career advancement directly benefits the local workforce and will, in turn, strengthen local economies.