Julia Bauscher

And one of my responsibilities was to advocate for school meals in Washington, D.C., calling on our elected president.

Senators and representatives test testifying about school meal programs before House and Senate committees and highlighting the importance of healthy school meals for kids.

So there are actually a variety of programs.

There's the National School Lunch Program, which provides lunch.

There's the School Breakfast Program, which provides breakfasts.

There's the supper program, which provides supper at schools.

There's the CACFP snack program that provides snack at schools.

And there's the summer food service program.

These are available to school food authorities across the country.

And many districts take advantage of all of those programs, just like JCPS did.

So there are standards for the program, which are national standards relative to calories and saturated fat requirements for fruits and vegetables, et cetera.

But there are some state requirements that vary a lot, which is becoming one of the increasing concerns for school directors because they

With the current focus on eliminating ultra-processed food, a lot of states are passing bills that eliminate ultra-processed foods without defining it.

Or if they define it, they may define it differently.

They're also eliminating a lot of ingredients that may be harmful from foods.

And that list of ingredients may vary from state to state, which makes it really difficult for manufacturers to produce products that meet all of these standards.

So I would argue that school meals are the healthiest meals students receive.

They're different than the meals they consume at home.

They're definitely different than the meals that they get at fast food restaurants or any restaurant for that matter.

Um,