Report: Serving Healthy School Meals

Posted by on January 13, 2014

Serving Healthy School Meals
U.S. schools need updated kitchen equipment

About this series of reports
This is the second in a series of reports that summarizes how schools are putting in place updated U.S.
Department of Agriculture, or USDA, meal standards and the challenges they must overcome to reach full
implementation. Specifically, this report will address school food service equipment and infrastructure needs.

The first report summarized districts’ readiness to meet updated nutrition standards. The key findings from
that report, “Serving Healthy School Meals: Despite Challenges, Schools Meet USDA Meal Requirements,” are:
• Finding 1: Ninety-four percent of school food authorities expected to be able to meet the updated lunch
requirements by the end of school year 2012-13, which was the year that the new requirements first went
into effect.
• Finding 2: Although the vast majority of school food authorities intended to meet the updated standards
by the end of the school year, most—91 percent—also indicated that they faced one or more challenges to
reaching full implementation. These included, for example, the lack of adequate equipment or training and
issues with food costs and availability.
• Finding 3: Most school food authorities without adequate equipment reported “making do” with some
type of less-efficient process, or workaround, which in turn was widely considered to be inadequate,
expensive, inefficient, and/or unsustainable.

The third report will address the training of school nutrition staff. Fact sheets will also be released addressing the needs of individual states regarding implementation of USDA’s standards.

http://www.healthyschoolfoodsnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/KITS_Equipment_Report.pdf