‘A UPF ban might help students eat better, but only if schools, and school kitchen staff, get the support they need to succeed with the changes.’
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‘A UPF ban might help students eat better, but only if schools, and school kitchen staff, get the support they need to succeed with the changes.’
April 23, 2025
A school lunch served in an elementary school in Colorado. (Photo credit: Amy Mund/USDA)
Last month, California moved to ban “particularly harmful” ultra-processed foods (UPF) from school meals. This initiative is a hot topic in several other states and also has a fair chance of taking hold on a federal level, given that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is clearly very opposed to UPF—and has just taken steps to phase out certain food dyes, commonly used in UPF.
I want to start by saying, I’m all for this. I run a company of chefs trying to help school food programs around the country move away from ultra-processed foods and cook more from scratch. This is my life. I wholeheartedly believe we should be doing everything we can to ensure that the meals we are serving students are as thoughtfully prepared, delicious, and nutritious as possible.
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That said, what looks like a positive change is actually quite complicated. There are a lot of rules already in place around school meals—and those rules, even when made with the best of intentions, have not always led to the most positive outcomes. A UPF ban might help students eat better, but only if schools, and school kitchen staff, get the support they need to succeed with the changes.
“Will the list of banned UPF become so exhaustive that school food programs, already dealing with nutritional guidelines, become completely unable to prepare meals that students will want to eat every day?”
Let me give you an example of how hard it is for schools to handle shifts in guidelines—and explain why eliminating UPFs may not be as straightforward as it sounds.
When the National School Lunch Program Guidelines went into effect about a decade ago, it mandated many changes that, on paper, looked much better for kids: more fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, less sodium and saturated fat.
While some studies claimed that school diets improved, most people who experienced the change would argue that the meals also became less appetizing as school programs struggled to meet the nutritional guidelines within their allotted budgets. Kitchen workers saw many meals going into the trash (although USDA’s biggest study on the changes found while kids threw out vegetables more than any other foods, the level of waste was generally unchanged after the standards were implemented).
Also, from-scratch cooking became more difficult, because it got too complicated for schools to comply with the new rules. Before the guidelines, many school kitchen staff used to bake and cook proteins themselves. Now they had to follow intimidating guidelines, tracking the nutrition content of every dish and assessing levels of sodium, saturated fats, calories, types of vegetables, and much more. Then schools had to ensure that the rules were being followed, creating an extra administrative burden.
Most schools were already offering some prepackaged ultra-processed foods—a shift that had been happening for decades—but now many switched their operational models to bring in significantly more of those items. It was easier for giant food manufacturers to adapt to the new nutritional guidelines than it was for under-resourced school food programs to do so.
Some schools used the guidelines as a launchpad to move toward more scratch cooking, but many transitioned away from it, selling off their kitchen equipment. When new schools were built, their kitchen spaces were designed for heating up pre-packaged items rather than cooking meals. Slowly but surely, kitchen infrastructure across the country began to disappear. Fewer kitchen staff were needed, and now it is common to see school kitchen labor models that feature only one or two full-time positions, with the rest being parttime staff who work only during meals, to serve food.
Eliminating UPFs from school food would require a massive adjustment within programs as they figure out how to reconfigure menus, and kitchens and staffing too.
The other issue with UPFs is that they are not clearly defined. They’re generally understood as foods (and ingredients) created with industrial processes not found in a home kitchen, but interpretations vary. The proposed bill requires scientists to identify “particularly harmful” UPF based on whether they include banned or restricted additives; whether the food or its ingredients are linked to health harms like cancer, obesity and diabetes, or contribute to “food addiction;” and whether the food is high in fat, sugar, or salt.
Will the list of banned UPF become so exhaustive that school food programs, already dealing with nutritional guidelines, become completely unable to prepare meals that students will want to eat every day?
“Can we really get more schools cooking from scratch? Cooking meals that are nutritious and delicious? Meals that kids enjoy? Absolutely!”
What would happen with school breakfast, for example? Commercially made bread, pre-made baked goods and bars, pre-cooked meats like sausage and bacon, breakfast cereals, and many flavored yogurts could all be considered UP foods. Even school food programs that do a lot of scratch cooking for lunch still rely on these items for their breakfast menus, because typically the entire school needs to be fed in a 20- to 30-minute window, and prepared items fit the breakfast budget, which is roughly half of what schools receive for lunch. Not to mention, breakfast cereals are often the only foods many students will eat in the morning, even if a scratch-made option is available.
My guess is that the definition of “harmful UPF” will most likely mean the elimination of many of the prepackaged, individually wrapped items that a lot of school food programs depend on to build out their menus. School food programs would have to start relying on actual cooking.
Assuming the UPF ban passes in California and begins to take hold in other states, can we really get more schools cooking from scratch? Cooking meals that are nutritious and delicious? Meals that kids enjoy? Absolutely!
A lot of school districts are already doing this or have started to do the work to get there. Brigaid alone is working with 40 school districts, representing over 850 schools, on building their capacity to cook more meals from scratch. Our work is spread across eight states, with most of it happening in California, and each school district is at a different stage of the process—from just starting to move away from serving primarily pre-packaged UP foods to already cooking a good portion of their meals from scratch.
Based on our experience, the work needed to support this type of transition is relatively straightforward, but it will take time and cost money. A lot of time and a lot of money.
Existing kitchen infrastructure (and equipment) in school districts would need to be evaluated to determine their current capabilities and how to improve that infrastructure, both in the short and long term, to make them suitable for onsite cooking. Any new kitchens would need to be built with this vision in mind.
School foodservice staff would need to be trained so they have the ability and confidence to prepare a variety of foods. This training should happen consistently over time, and whenever new operational systems are implemented or new recipes are introduced. Beyond training, as more cooking takes place, daily hours should also increase.
And finally, school food employees should be paid an hourly wage in line with the importance of their work; right now many are paid less than fast-food workers—for preparing food that nourishes kids every day.
Most school food programs aren’t in a position to spend beyond what they need to run the operation day to day. Schools would require additional funding to enact these changes, and for a sustained period of time.
Although the USDA provides funding for school programs, state agencies disperse those funds, and can add on to them in different ways. Some states, like New York and Michigan, have incentivized school food programs to source locally by bumping up the per-meal reimbursement they receive. Similar incentives could work for UPF reduction, too: School food programs that commit to removing UPF from their menus could receive a higher per-meal reimbursement.
Also, schools could receive an up-front lump sum for infrastructure and training, as has been the casen California over the past few years. The state has given every school participating in the National School Lunch Program multiple rounds of Kitchen, Infrastructure, and Training (KIT) funds, based on the size of the district, the need, and the number of meals served. Schools can also opt into a final lump sum if they agree to prepare 40 percent of their meals according to “freshly prepared” guidelines that emphasize whole, minimally processed ingredients.
Over the years, in an effort to make school meals healthier, we have made it harder and harder for school food programs to feed their students well. In fact, we’ve made it so hard that in many cases we’ve given the giant food manufacturers the upper hand, which has led to more UPF in school meals.
The banning of ultra-processed foods in school meals would theoretically reduce the presence of these companies in the school food space, but I’m not counting on it. Kids need to eat. Either school districts are going to cook on their own, with more help, or giant manufacturers are going to figure out how to adapt to new regulations and keep selling processed food to schools. If we don’t get behind school food programs, my money is on the giant food companies.
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