ScratchWorks appreciates the MAHA Commission’s effort to bring national attention to the growing crisis of chronic childhood illness. We applaud the report’s focus on the role of ultra-processed foods, the importance of whole food-based diets, and the need to publish the 2025 Dietary Guidelines aligned with current scientific standards– principles that align closely with our work supporting school districts in transitioning to scratch cooking.

However, recognizing the problem is only the first step. Schools across the country are already working tirelessly to feed children healthy meals, often with limited resources and support. Without concrete policy commitments, the path from recommendations to reality remains steep. We urge policymakers to build on the Commission’s findings by investing in key areas such as: 

• Increased school meal reimbursement rates to better cover the cost of running a school nutrition program that regularly serves high-quality meals. 
• Stronger support for workforce development to train, recruit, and retain skilled school food professionals. 
• Expanded access to local, whole, fresh ingredients. Notably, schools receive a large portion of their food directly from the government through the USDA commodities programs. Greater food quality and transparency provided by commodities would have an immediate impact on school nutrition. Flexibility offered through alternative programs like Cash in Lieu and Commodity Line of Credit would also empower school food operators to source their own high-quality food.

At ScratchWorks, we have seen firsthand what is possible when schools are given the tools, funding, and flexibility to prepare meals from scratch. Our participating districts have developed best practices and this growing network of leaders is ready to implement change.

We urge policymakers and stakeholders to build on the Commission’s findings by making meaningful, sustained investments in school food systems. With the right support, schools are the perfect environment to enact public health change, serving nutritious meals that help children thrive both in and out of the classroom.

“As food service providers in a high-volume, diverse school district, we face daily challenges balancing strict federal regulations and policies, the health expectations of adults, and the limited food and flavor exposure our students start our program with, all against a very tight budget. We strive to provide healthy options that still appeal to our children, in a framework that puts tedious requirements above the ultimate goal: universal food access for all students. Our hope is for improved collaboration between policy makers and our teams in the field to create real and sustainable improvements to our operation.”

Diane Grodek

Executive Chef

Austin Independent School District

Collective Urges Further Action to Support Implementation and Success of Scratch-Cooking School Food Professionals

ScratchWorks – a collective of school food professionals and non-profit organizations committed to supporting school districts in cooking school meals from scratch using whole, fresh ingredients that provide students with the nutrition they need for their educational success, health, and wellbeing – recognizes the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its efforts to improve child nutrition through its recent updates to the school nutrition standards.

“School districts need nutrition standards so that kids across the country have healthy meals. Strong standards are important because school food professionals are doing so many things, and nutrition standards give us a framework to build on and help us to know that the meals we serve are nutritious for our students,” said ScratchWorks Participant and Executive Director of Food and Nutrition Services for Boston Public Schools Anneliese Tanner. “Standards help to create equity in our food system by ensuring that all kids receive healthy meals at school. In fact, we know that school cafeterias are the healthiest places that Americans eat.” 

We are encouraged by the new added sugar limits and sodium reduction targets, both of which will improve access to nourishing food in schools. Additionally, the changes to the Buy American and Geographic Preference provisions will allow schools to prioritize procuring more locally grown and produced foods. Scratch cooking and providing schools with the resources needed to do so will help our school food professionals meet these new standards, and we stand by as a collective to offer support to schools needing guidance with these provisions and to offer feedback to USDA regarding on-the-ground implementation.

School meals represent the greatest opportunity for nutritious food for many students across the country, with millions of children relying on school meals for a third to half of their food intake during the school week. In addition to their physical health benefits, nutritious meals have also been shown to improve learning outcomes and lead to a lifetime of healthy eating habits. With approximately 20 percent of school-aged children nationwide being at risk for diet-related diseases, it is imperative that school nutrition guidelines are aligned with current dietary guidance.

“For the first time, USDA has unveiled added sugar standards in school meal programs paired with additional sodium reduction targets. Cutting back on sugar fights childhood obesity and its associated health risks, while further reducing sodium paves the way for improved cardiovascular health,” said ScratchWorks Participant, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, and Director of Food & Nutrition Services for Tahoe Truckee Unified School District Kat Soltanmorad. “Beyond physical benefits, these initiatives bolster academic performance by ensuring students are nourished and alert throughout the school day. Prioritizing healthier school meals isn’t just a choice – it’s an imperative investment in the future health and success of our children.”

ScratchWorks appreciates USDA’s diligent efforts throughout this process and engagement of school nutrition stakeholders for their input, and we look forward to our continued collaboration with the department. Our collective stands ready to offer support and resources to school districts looking to use scratch cooking as a vehicle to meet the updated school nutrition standards, as well as to USDA by providing them with implementation support and feedback through our group of scratch-cooking school food operators. Additionally, we urge USDA and Congress to offer further support to our school food professionals seeking to increase scratch cooking by offering additional funding for shared learning and training opportunities, infrastructure, and equipment.

ScratchWorks, a collective of school food professionals and non-profit organizations committed to supporting school districts in cooking school meals from scratch, urges House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders to spearhead the swift passage of a strong five-year Farm Bill in 2024.

“A critical aspect of school food programs is the ability to plan menus in advance, guiding the procurement process guaranteeing availability of products and compliance to USDA regulations. This is the only way we can ensure students are receiving healthy and scratch-cooked meals where possible,” said Bertrand Weber, ScratchWorks Founding School District Leader and Director of Culinary and Wellness Services for Minneapolis Public Schools. “A delayed Farm Bill affects our entire food ecosystem and the institutions that rely upon it to provide healthy, locally-sourced food to our communities.”

While the delinquent Child Nutrition Reauthorization process mostly has jurisdiction over school food programs, such as the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program, the Farm Bill still has both direct and indirect effects on school meals. In addition to overseeing smaller school food programs, such as the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, the Farm Bill supports our overall food system and producers across the country. Delays in the Farm Bill process cause uncertainty within the system, affecting school food programs and their ability to forecast as a key part of the procurement process.

We urge Congress to swiftly pass a strong five-year Farm Bill in 2024. Our strained school food programs cannot afford more roadblocks to providing healthy meals to our students, who rely on nutritious school food to learn, grow, and thrive.

(ref:  School meal quality and academic performance. Anderson ML, Gallagher J, Ramirez Ritchie E. School meal quality and academic performance. Journal of Public Economics. 2018;168:81-93. doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.09.013)

Chef Ann Cooper – a founding member of ScratchWorks – spoke before the House Rules Committee on the importance of scratch cooking at a roundtable on the role schools play in ending hunger and improving child nutrition. This is the powerful testimony she delivered to Congress at the invitation of Chairman Jim McGovern:

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Chairman McGovern, Ranking Member Cole, and distinguished Members of the Committee,

My name is Ann Cooper, and I am the Founder and President of the Board of the Chef Ann Foundation as well as a founding member of the ScratchWorks Collective and a former School Food Service Director for over two decades.

I am grateful for the opportunity to address this committee regarding childhood nutrition and the benefits of scratch cooking in school meal programs. Our country, our planet, our food system, and our children are facing many challenges today. We have an opportunity to address some of these challenges through our national school food programs. 

I grew up in Hingham, MA and became a well-known chef in my early career, focused on creating culinary art in high-end restaurants. Through my work in sustainable food and agriculture, I was introduced to Alice Waters who helped me understand that our nation’s school food system was broken and adding to our challenges around childhood wellness, planetary health, academic achievement, and health equity. As a young – and somewhat naive – chef, I was drawn to the challenge of school food and blazed a new career path in the early 2000’s as the Food Service Director for Berkeley Unified School District in California.

I was shocked to learn of the reliance on packaged, processed foods there and felt that I had found my life’s mission in helping to create the food that would shape the life-long nutritional habits of children. With the experience I had built from opening and running kitchens in restaurants, hotels, and cruise ships as well as overseeing catering events of 20,000 people, I worked with my school food team to create a new paradigm, relying on my culinary, procurement, labor training, and fiscal modeling skills. Dubbed “The Renegade Lunch Lady” by the media for serving fresh food, cooked from scratch in schools, I began to understand that the road I was embarking on would be a long one. 

Nearly 20 years later, one of the things that makes me smile is meeting, hearing stories from and reading about all of the “Renegade” School Food Professionals in their communities across our country striving – under seriously adverse conditions – to serve kids fresh, scratch-cooked meals made with whole ingredients. 

The Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010 was our nation’s most monumental legislation passed to support healthier school meals. Over the last decade, even as it got “watered-down,” that act has ensured that our kids have access to more fresh fruits, veggies, and whole grains, as well as less sodium and saturated fat. It is now time to build on those 10 years of success. 

While we have been able to increase the nutritional guidelines through HHFK, we have not been as successful moving the school food system away from ultra-processed foods. Large food manufacturers have simply reengineered their packaged, processed foods to meet the new guidelines. Chairman McGovern, you yourself have said that “we shouldn’t have to wait for a once-in-a-century pandemic to think boldly about addressing fundamental injustices in our society.” Myself and our school food partners across the country couldn’t agree more. Because of the pandemic, some people learned for the first time how important school meals are and how reliant families are on them. We need to make sure that we are not just addressing hunger relief through calorie relief, but that through a health equity lense we provide nutrition relief. 

Over two-thirds — or 67% — of the calories consumed by children and adolescents in 2018 came from ultra-processed foods, a jump from 61% in 1999, according to a peer-reviewed study published in the medical journal JAMA. “A diet high in ultra-processed foods may negatively influence children’s dietary quality and contribute to adverse health outcomes in the long term,” says the study’s author, Fang Zhang, a nutrition and cancer epidemiologist at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. School food cannot keep contributing to kid’s increased consumption of ultra-processed foods; it is simply not okay.

By supporting scratch cooking in schools, we are putting the power of procurement back into the hands of school food operators. I have worked with school districts to help them take their ultra-processed chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, and pizza off the menu and replace them with scratch-cooked items. A processed chicken nugget has up to 30 ingredients in it, many of which you can’t even pronounce. When you replace that with oven-fried chicken that has only 8 ingredients in it, you are able to affect the health of the meal, procure (some) higher quality, more sustainable ingredients, and build out your workforce that has more value and skill. I don’t want to paint an unrealistic picture. Districts still only have about $1.30 to spend per lunch on the food; the reimbursement rate needs to be increased. However, even with that small amount of money, districts can start making better procurement decisions and create impact in their local economies when they scratch cook. In fact, a 2017 study from the National Farm to School Network found that every dollar invested in farm to school stimulates an additional $0.60-$2.16 of local economic activity. In other words, scratch cooking can ultimately support small and medium sized farms and help to stabilize our country’s farmers.

Over 30 million kids eat school lunch in our country every day, and that number is growing with increased need. Approximately two-thirds of those children qualify for “Free & Reduced” meals, which means they are living in households with total income within 180% of the poverty line; many are children of color. Our country spends almost $19 billion annually on school breakfast and lunch, so it’s time that we made sure those dollars are working hard for our children and for our planet. It should be a birthright in this country, one of the richest on the planet, that every child has access to healthy food every day and that no child is ever hungry!

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Watch Chef Ann’s full testimony.

Hear Chef Ann’s answers to the committee members’ questions.

• How schools can move to scratch cooking
• What equipment and support schools need to scratch cook
• Why Congress must pass healthy school meals for all

Learn more about the “Ending Hunger in America: Examining the Role Schools Play in Ending Hunger and Improving Nutrition” roundtable.

ScratchWorks joins advocates for healthier school meals in commending the House Education and Labor Committee on their Build Back Better Act for budget reconciliation, which makes needed investments in our schools’ kitchens, cafeterias, and nutrition education programs. We know from our members’ firsthand experiences that healthy, delicious school meals cooked from scratch using whole, fresh ingredients are essential for supporting our children’s health and learning, ensuring the sustainability of our food systems, and achieving nutrition equity in our country. 

The Build Back Better Act recognizes the importance of scratch cooking and looks to expand its application in school districts across the country through these provisions:

• $500 million for schools to purchase the kitchen equipment needed to increase their level of scratch cooking;
• $25 million for schools to receive training and technical assistance on scratch cooking; and
• $634 million for schools to run programs expanding healthy food offerings, which will support increased scratch cooking.

This funding will help districts of all sizes serve more nutritious food, purchase more local ingredients, provide better career opportunities to their staff, and instill healthier eating habits in more students. The provision for training and technical assistance will also ensure that schools have the expert support they need to select and implement new kitchen equipment so that it aligns strategically with their nutrition goals.

ScratchWorks again applauds the House Education and Labor Committee for their meaningful commitment to healthier school meals. We especially want to express our gratitude to Chairman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott and Congresswoman Jahana Hayes for their strong leadership during this process and for their ongoing support of child nutrition.

We urge Congress to pass this legislation quickly and hope that today’s investments in school food pave the way for a near future where every child has daily access to fresh, healthy, delicious meals at school.