Title: Getting a Better School Lunch | NRDC
Headings: Getting a Better School Lunch
Getting a Better School Lunch
By working with schools, parents can make their kids’ cafeteria lunches healthier and more planet-friendly.
Strive for a salad bar.
Check out new vendors.
Get fresh and (really) local.
Lengthen lunchtime.
Slash waste.
Focus on flavor.
Tell the EPA to protect bees from toxic pesticides and save our food supply
Take Action
Related Stories

Content: Getting a Better School Lunch | NRDC
Our Stories › Personal Action
Getting a Better School Lunch
By working with schools, parents can make their kids’ cafeteria lunches healthier and more planet-friendly. October 13, 2016 Ginny Graves
Tom Merton/Getty
Picture a school cafeteria lunch. What comes to mind? Pizza, Tater Tots, chicken nuggets? The quality of school food has improved in the last 20 years­—thanks in large part to 2010’s Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which mandates that schools serve a fruit and vegetable every day, increase the number of whole-grain foods, and limit trans fats and sodium. Of course, there’s still work to be done. “ Many schools are still hard at work increasing fruits and veggies and phasing out more processed foods,” says Margaret Brown, an NRDC staff attorney who spearheads NRDC’s regional food efforts and is working closely with the Urban School Food Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of six of the largest school districts in the United States. And the potential health impact of improving school meals is enormous. Some 32 million kids eat school meals every day, and for many low-income students, those meals supply more than half their daily calories. And the waste created by all-too-common polystyrene trays is adding to the already-astronomical pollution in our waterways.