Healthier school lunches with locally grown food is more of an option after USDA 'tweaks' standards

Schools will be able to request 'locally grown, raised or caught food' for student meals.
(Adobe Stock photo)

The Department of Agriculture recently released its long-anticipated school meal nutritional standards, including new guidelines focused on lowering sodium and limiting added sugar in students' meals. The standards also include a "small tweak [with] big implications for the increasing number of schools working to get more fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats produced by nearby farmers onto students' trays," reports Lisa Held of Civil Eats. "Starting July 1, when districts put out a call for an unprocessed or minimally processed food — whether it's tomatoes, taco meat, or tuna—they'll be able to specify that they'd like it to be 'locally grown, locally raised, or locally caught.'"

The USDA's change aims to allow schools to specifically request food from regional growers so that farmers and educational communities can work together to provide students with healthier meals produced closer to home. Held explains, "Karen Spangler, the policy director for the National Farm to School Network, said the change has long been a priority for the group because it often hears how the shift will simplify the process for school nutrition directors while also making it possible for more farmers to get involved in the first place."

Connecting school meals and area food has been a work in progress since 2010. "When Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act . . . . It was the first Child Nutrition Reauthorization to push nutrition to the forefront of school meal programs, and it included the first federal farm-to-school grants," Held writes. "Since then, the federal government has supported the efforts in additional ways, alongside numerous state incentives and grant programs as well as work done by nonprofit organizations."

Part of the local-to-school push includes making the bidding process easier for schools and local farming businesses to collaborate. Apple procurement is one example. Held reports, "If the district is confident that plenty of in-state orchards have enough Macintosh and Granny Smiths to satisfy their students' appetites, it could specify up-front that it only wants bids from in-state orchards."

While advocates for more local food are celebrating the change, some feel it is long overdue. "Previously, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) attempted to go the Congressional route to make [local food to schools] happen, introducing the Kids Eat Local Act multiple times with bipartisan support," Held writes. "But the bill never went anywhere because the overall Child Nutrition Reauthorization process is now nine years overdue. . . . Pingree plans to continue to reintroduce the bill so that it will eventually be set in law and therefore be more likely to stick."