While it has not always been the case, within the past few years, school cafeterias across the country have begun serving healthier options for lunch. This is great, but why did it take so long for schools to finally do this? What was it that was limiting school lunches to pizza, burgers, and even name brand fast food? Well, it their reasonings have a lot less to do with not wanting healthy food at a lot more to do with overall food costs.While the cost of school lunches for students is not terribly expensive, only $2.50 in some places, it is expensive for the schools when they have to provide food for an entire school population (Arnold, 2016). In this way, it was extremely difficult, despite the increased pressure to provide healthier lunches, for schools to afford to provide healthier, made from scratch lunches, as not as many students will not eat them (Sifferlin, 2013). In some cases, schools had even taken to proving name brand fast food lunches, in order to keep the program supported and going (Lehmann, 2013). Even when the cafeteria staff would create their own versions of fast food favorites, students would not buy them nearly as often as they would with the recognizable brand prominently displayed (Lehmann, 2013)
The new School-Lunch program has encouraged more schools to provide healthier and made from scratch lunches, including fruits and vegetables, as well as a better balanced meal, the new program does not cover all the costs for provisions (Sifferlin, 2013). Due to the change and newness of the program, not as many students are opting to pay for food they are not as familiar with, and are instead bringing their own home-prepared lunches, depriving the cafeteria its much needed additional funding to continue the program (Sifferlin, 2013). While some parents especially those with younger children, appreciate this change and are purchasing more of the healthier lunches, it is having a much harder time taking root in junior-high and high schools around the country (Arnold, 2016). So while the cost, has increased and encouraged lower sales, if the program is continued, it should yield better results with continuing generations.