Increasing Investment in School Meals Pays for Itself, and Then Some

School Meals Are Undervalued

The facts are clear: School meal programs have a positive impact on kids. Scientific studies repeatedly show the benefits of school meals: When children have their basic needs met, they are healthier and they learn better. For more than 30 million children in the United States, school meals often provide the healthiest food they have access to each day and a foundation for their well-being and long-term success.

Now a new evaluation of the programs using True Cost Accounting methodologies, published in collaboration with the Center for Good Food Purchasing, shows that our national investment of $18.7 billion in school meal programs each year generates nearly $40 billion in human health and economic benefits annually. In other words, for every dollar our country spends on school food we receive more than two dollars back – a guaranteed return on investment that could make any investor envious.

New Areas for Investments Identified

Despite their clear benefits, we’ve often seen school meal programs targeted for budget cuts, efforts to reach more kids with free meals questioned, and nutrition standards placed on the chopping block. Instead, we should be doubling down on the success of these programs. We deeply undervalue our school meal programs—and many other social programs—when we look only at their price tag. True Cost Accounting helps us understand a program’s full benefits to society and opportunities to generate higher returns.

Our analysis identified three primary areas for additional investment in school meal programs that could create even greater net benefits to children, families, and communities:

• Using public purchasing dollars to support a better food system: By optimizing the ways schools purchase food, including intentional sourcing from local and regional food suppliers, school meals could produce another $1.3 billion in annual net value compared with the status quo. Food purchasing dollars can support local economies, producer and worker livelihoods, and environmental health, and generate more equitable returns to farmers of color, food workers, and suppliers who have been excluded. Many school nutrition directors and their allies have been working to achieve this vision, and with more supportive regulations and policy incentives can go even further.
• Maximizing student participation: The current school meals programs serve nearly 45 million meals per day. Despite these numbers, the programs are underutilized, often due to stigma associated with school meals or the bureaucratic challenges of enrolling in the program. If every student who was eligible under standard federal rules participated, meals served would increase by 40% and generate an additional $7.5 billion of net value. These numbers can increase even more if we extend free meal access to all children. This could also help reduce stigma, save school districts mountains of paperwork, and open up new opportunities for innovation in school foodservice.
• Improving dietary composition: Food served in school meal programs is regulated by federal guidelines making it healthier than the average American diet. According to one recent study, the current nutrition standards adopted in 2010 have already prevented 500,000 cases of child obesity among students from low-income families. Shifting nutritional quality even further, away from foods like processed meat and those high in added sugar, and toward meal patterns higher in whole grains, legumes and vegetables, would further help to prevent diet-related diseases and also have environmental and climate benefits. This change could yield more than $1.5 billion in additional net value each year.