Will RFK Jr. Reheat the School Lunch Wars?

Improving school lunches might seem like a straightforward, wholesome endeavor—at-home in a first lady’s platform alongside anti-bullying efforts and encouraging kids to read—but veterans of the school lunch wars know changing federal food policy is not as simple as swapping tator tots for carrot sticks.

The benefits of serving healthier food—a primary source of nutrition for many children from low-income households—must be balanced with the practical limits of school cafeterias, and the sometimes finicky palates of the kids they serve.

School food programs typically have their own budgets separate from their districts’, serving thousands of meals a day on very tight margins. Even the smallest changes to regulations can strain existing staff and limited equipment, nutrition directors say.

And virtually every food that hits a school lunch tray—including potatoes, frozen foods, salad dressing, and those little cartons of chocolate milk—is backed by a very specific lobbying group determined to keep it on the menu.

It’s a recipe for a political food fight—and a reality that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, will have to confront if he follows through on his promise to eliminate processed food from school lunches.

That pledge is part of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, a vague platform that also calls for things like scrutinizing vaccine requirements and removing fluoride from the public water supply.

If he does pursue changes to the school nutrition programs, Kennedy could borrow some lessons from the tumult that former first lady Michelle Obama encountered 14 years ago as her husband signed the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act into law.

That measure required more training for school cafeteria workers, increased federal reimbursements for school meals, and the creation of new nutrition standards that mandated less sodium and fat and more fresh vegetables and whole grains in school meals, Education Week reported at the time.

“Kids can’t be expected to sit still and concentrate when they’re on a sugar high,” Michelle Obama said, “or when they’re hungry.”

Trump has a history of relaxing school meal standards

The changes were met with ridicule from some Republican members of Congress and conservative political groups, who panned Obama’s efforts as ideologically driven overreach.

“Make no mistake; the underlying assumption is that federal technocrats and educated individuals such as [Obama] need to act on your behalf to meet the best interests of your children,” said a 2014 opinion piece from the Heritage Foundation, which criticized heightened regulations and accused Obama of being “arrogant” and trying to “be a co-parent” to America’s children.

Trump’s first administration later provided waivers for many of those regulations, reducing schools’ obligations to lower sodium levels and use more whole-grain products.

“If kids aren’t eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting any nutrition—thus undermining the intent of the program,” then Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in 2017.

In April, the Biden administration forged a more permanent compromise that loosened sodium restrictions, placed new limits on added sugars and, most notably, allowed schools to continue serving chocolate milk. (The USDA had initially proposed banning chocolate milk in elementary and middle school lunches to help cut back kids’ sugar intake.)

Fast forward to now, as the transition to a second Trump administration is in full swing: Those conservative groups that criticized Obama have said nothing about Kennedy’s school meal plans.

That history is one reason advocates for healthier, scratch-made school meals are taking a wait-and-see approach to Kennedy’s pledge.

Removing processed foods from school meals “would be momentous,” said Mara Fleishman, CEO of Chef Ann Foundation, an organization that helps districts serve freshly cooked, healthy meals. “The reality is that the past Trump administration worked to roll back a lot of the guidelines in school food. This [pledge] wouldn’t be consistent with what we’ve seen in reality.”

If he becomes HHS secretary, RFK Jr. could shape American dietary guidelines

If confirmed, Kennedy would have little direct control over the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, which are housed in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But Trump has pledged to let Kennedy “go wild on health,” signaling a potential for broader influence over the administration’s priorities across agencies. (Brooke Rollins, the Trump’s choice for agriculture secretary, has not stated a public position on changes to school meal programs.)

One key lever for Kennedy may be the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the latest version of which will be finalized by leaders at HHS and USDA next year, said Meghan Maroney, the campaign manager for federal child nutrition programs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Those guidelines, which inform requirements for federal nutrition programs, are based on recommendations from a panel of scientists who review the latest research on how factors like dietary patterns, portion size, and sodium intake effect cardiovascular health and obesity.

Scientists appointed to inform the newest dietary guidelines released findings Dec. 10 recommending that Americans eat less red meat and starchy foods and limit salt, fat, and added sugars in their diets.

But the panel concluded there’s not enough research to draw conclusions about the effects of ultra-processed foods, in part because researchers used varying definitions when they studied them. Ultra-processed foods included in school meals include corn dogs, prepackaged breakfast pastries, chicken nuggets, and even Lunchables.

School meal programs often operate with limited staff and outdated equipment

Making school meals healthier requires more than a new federal regulation, Fleishman said. Practical challenges abound, too.

Many school kitchens are ill-equipped, and schools face steep competition to hire food staff, who often have limited training in how to prepare meals, she said. Many schools serve prepackaged and heat-and-serve processed foods because they are so logistically constrained, Fleishman said.

In a 2024 member survey by the School Nutrition Association, 90 percent of school meal program directors said they are challenged by staff shortages and just 17 percent indicated the current federal meal reimbursement rate, $4.30 for every free lunch served, is sufficient to cover the cost of producing a meal.

That’s why another possible Trump administration priority may conflict with any efforts to improve meals. His political allies, including the authors of Project 2025, have called for new restrictions on the community eligibility provision, a federal rule allows schools to provide federally subsidized free lunches and breakfasts to all students without requiring income verification from their families.

Individual schools or clusters of schools are eligible to offer free meals for all under the CEP if at least 25 percent of their student population automatically qualifies for free lunches through participation in social-safety-net programs like Medicaid or federal food assistance. But some congressional Republicans want to raise that threshold or eliminate community eligibility altogether.

The School Nutrition Association has said such changes would increase administrative burdens for school food staff and take away a source of financial stability for their programs.

It would be difficult for school kitchens to dramatically shift their offerings in such an environment, nutrition advocates said.

“School meals are complicated,” said Alexis Bylander, the interim director of child nutrition programs and policy at the Food Research and Action Center, which advocates for increased access to free school meals. “We are talking about serving 30 million students a day. Any changes to the nutrition standards need to take into account staffing, equipment, food sourcing—all of the parts that create that system.”