The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement is taking aim at school lunches in a move advocates say is unrealistic without devoting more federal resources to K-12 students.
While some schools can only afford to buy frozen meals that are heated up and served, the Trump administration is looking for freshly cooked meals that will take more employees and ingredients to put together.
The MAHA Commission was required to send over recommendations to the White House by Tuesday to combat childhood chronic diseases, a document experts and advocates are eagerly awaiting. But three people familiar with the matter told CNN the report will not be released immediately to the public, keeping schools on their toes as it is expected to impact their food.
“We’re guessing at this point what we think that the report is going to say around school nutrition, but we have a few hints. RFK Jr. has said that school lunch programs have deteriorated. He’s mentioned how many ultraprocessed foods are in school meals. He’s suggested that school meals are poisoning children. … I think we’re all pretty much anticipating something around that,” said Meghan Maroney, campaign manager for federal child nutrition programs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has railed against school lunches before, saying the ultraprocessed food and food dyes are hurting student health. He has moved to ban artificial food dyes from the nation’s supply chain and has pushed fast food chains to cook their food in beef tallow over seed oils.
“We need to stop poisoning our kids and make sure that Americans are once again the healthiest kids on the planet,” Kennedy said in April.
He has celebrated states such as Utah, West Virginia and Arizona, where certain dyes and processed food were banned from school lunches.
But other moves by the Trump administration, advocates argue, have been counterintuitive to helping schools produce fresh meals.
The U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA) in the spring ended two programs, totaling $1 billion, that helped schools buy food from local farmers and producers. USDA is in charge of the nutrition standards for the National School Lunch Program.
“They are being asked to create healthy and appealing meals on very slim budgets, and there have been things that have been happening recently that have taken away even more of their resources,” said Alexis Bylander, director of child nutrition programs and policy at the Food Research & Action Center.
“I think what this really comes down to is, are the recommendations going to provide enough resources so that schools really can enhance the quality and appeal of the meals that they are serving?” she added.
In Oklahoma, Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of public instruction, has already been working on implementing the MAHA agenda in school food, saying schools can no longer serve food that is ultraprocessed or grown with pesticides and processed snacks in vending machines.
The districts are expected to overhaul the foods without additional room in the budget.
“What we’re seeing with the MAHA movement as it’s applied in our state is lots of talk about restriction and what people can have and what choices they can make, but not a lot of talk about making sure people have access to the healthy things they need or the resources they need to not be food insecure … because, ultimately, if you don’t have access to enough food, nutritious or not, your health outcomes are worse than if you do,” said Chris Bernard, CEO and president of Hunger Free Oklahoma.
Along with changes to food costs, schools would have to pay for more employees to make the food and, in some cases, would need to acquire equipment to be able to handle making fresh food for hundreds of students every day.
The Hill has reached out to HHS for comment.
Some are hoping for a definitive set of markers to build upon for what types of food should be served and what the cost will be.
“When we establish that baseline, then we can move from it, then we actually have something that we can achieve goals and we can achieve targets with,” said Gregory Bundschoks, founder for the Foundation of Healthy Schools. He added that there needs to be “consistency” for businesses trying to make a profit while also remaining within the new mandates.
Advocates note school food is the healthiest many students eat and, for some, it might be the only full meal they get in a day.
While schools have partnered with some nonprofits to help bring fresher meals to their students, not every district is able to afford it.
According to USDA, in 2023, 1 in 5 children were unsure where their next meal would come from. Black, Latino and single-family households were more likely to be food insecure.
“I do think school meals are one of the last remaining universal public school services that are reaching every child, nearly in America … so making school the ideal environment to shape their wellness behavior, and a lot of that starts with food,” said Alexina Cather, director of policy and special projects for Wellness in the Schools.
“As we see increasing rates of food insecurity, food again at school becomes one of the places that kids can be guaranteed a nutritious meal if we put that energy and effort into making sure that’s a nutritious meal,” she added.
