The National School Lunch Program Is It Working

The National School Lunch Program: Is It Working?

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to make transparent the current National School Lunch Program (NSLP). The first mission of this project is to clarify how the NSLP functions on a day-to-day basis in Columbus, Ohio. Columbus is used as a sample city, yet the aim of this research is to be transferable to other locations. The second objective is to gain a clearer understanding of the NSLP from the perspective of those who work in the field, and how they would like to improve the Program. This study employs qualitative inquiry through the use of individual interviews and observations to measure the participants. The approach is naturalistic, which encourages the researcher to interact with the sample in their natural environment. The perspective is that of eleven individuals working for the National School Lunch Program. Through a guided interviewing process these participants spoke of their experiences in the current nutritional model, and gave suggestions of improvement. Their stories on nutrition, hopes of better food, and equitable lunches were audio-recorded, and the data were analyzed and coded in a final report. The results from this investigation reveal that the National School Lunch Program is a spike, or a foreign object inserted into an environment, having little interaction with the community. In addition, those working in the National School Lunch Program often did not see problems with the initiative (even in the face of growing obesity, inattentive disorders, and mood issues). During the interviews it became apparent that many in the NSLP see the benefits of bringing in more local, fresher foods for the students, but they could not imagine going against the hierarchy of the NSLP. In response to the first research question, how the NSLP functions, the most frequent response was through near total control. Indeed, this faltering program, one that the USDA has hopes of making healthier, sees itself as unchangeable.

As part of the School Meals Initiative (SMI), the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Food and Nutrition Service (USDA-FNS) now requires each state to regularly review the nutritional content of food served by each School Food Authority (SFA) as part of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). While states must monitor the nutritional content of school meals, they are not required to forward any information to USDA-FNS. However, USDA-FNS is required to measure progress to "ensure that school meals are consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) and the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA)." To measure progress, USDA-FNS needs to produce state and national aggregations of the nutrient content in school lunches to show that meals in a given state or in the country as a whole are consistent with the DGA and RDA. In addition, FNS needs to do this while imposing minimal reporting burdens on the states. The USDA-FNS contracted with RAND to look more carefully at how some states are performing SMI reviews and how they might be able to transmit data with limited additional burden. In particular, it asked seven states to work collaboratively with RAND--through on-site, in-depth interviews--to explore possible reporting systems: California, Georgia, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Wisconsin. These states were chosen as representative of regional differences across the country and of methods for conducting SMI reviews. This report describes the results of the analysis of possible approaches for states to report the results of their nutritional reviews to USDA-FNS.