How Do They Determine What Is A Healthy Menu For High School?

Although signs indicate that weight and nutrition have been a problem for American youth for decades, the issue has received heightened media attention since 2009. A look at approved school lunches for high school clarifies why this is so. Fast food, starchy carbohydrates and sugary flavored milk are all on the "approved" list, leading many to wonder how they got approved in the first place.

USDA Food Recommendations

School nutrition guidelines are based on the recommendations of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA Food Plate suggests eating foods in specific proportions in order to ensure balanced daily nutrition. Detractors of the USDA recommendations -- including the Harvard School of Public Health -- note, however, that the USDA mandate is to support American agribusiness, not to support public health. This has led to recommendations in the Food Plate that aren't congruent with modern nutrition science.

Federal Guidelines

Based on the USDA recommendations, the U.S. Government publishes a set of school lunch guidelines they require for school districts to receive federal lunch funding. These guidelines describe the ways in which a lunch will qualify as "approved" for according to law. Though the rules are complex, they generally require each meal to be composed of minimum amounts of bread, vegetables, protein, fruit and dairy products.

Local Menu

The nutrition services department is responsible for setting the menu in an individual school district. Assuming they meet the federal standards, nutrition services personnel have a great deal of leeway when setting their menus. Depending on the district, that decision might be made with input from the school board, or may be entirely the bailiwick of the department. School districts also frequently subcontract out high school lunch programs, in which case the menu choices are up to the employees of a for-profit business.

Cost Basis

Aside from legal guidelines, cost is the most influential factor when deciding what goes into public school lunches. This is usually expressed as a maximum "per student" or "per meal" cost, funded by local and federal taxes. These maximum costs are often quite low -- which is one of the reasons high school lunches are often composed of inexpensive frozen and processed foods, rather than the fresh foods more conducive to learning and retention.