MAHA Promised Healthier Kids. But School Lunches May Deliver Less.

This article was produced in collaboration with the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2025 Impact Fund for Reporting on Health Equity and Health Systems.

The rise of Make America Healthy Again arrived with big promises for kids: an end to chronic disease, a focus on nutrition and healthier school meals. For school food professionals and public health advocates, it seemed like an unexpected win that could benefit the millions of children who rely on federal school meals, often the most nutritious — and sometimes the only reliable — food they receive all day. That push to improve children’s health from a Republican administration was all the more surprising, considering the political attacks Michelle Obama endured when she campaigned to improve school nutrition.

But those hopes are colliding with reality. Despite MAHA’s rhetoric, the Trump administration has cut programs supporting children’s health and school nutrition. In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture abruptly canceled the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement and Local Food for Schools programs, which together provided more than $1 billion to help schools and food banks buy produce, meat and dairy from local farms and ranches.

For food service directors like Kim Sieck in Iowa’s Gri​​nnell-Newburg school district, the fallout was immediate. Without farm-to-school funds, she can no longer add better tasting, locally sourced, nutrient dense microgreen sprouts to the fruit and vegetable bar, a hit with the kids and a win for anyone who has tried to get a child to eat vegetables. Gone also is the farm-fresh corn she served with a chicken pot pie bowl and the apples from a local orchard, which she used as an educational opportunity: “We explained this apple is different from what you get at the store. It came straight from the tree. It may have a few bumps, and it’s not bright red because it doesn’t have all that wax on it to preserve it.”  

Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy, was baffled by the cuts. “The basic idea of supporting farmers, especially smaller farmers, and having them work closely with local school systems isn’t a Democrat or Republican idea. It’s just a good idea,” she said.

As the school year begins, nutrition experts warn that the administration’s policies contradict the stated MAHA agenda. Ending the farm-to-school food programs undermines local economies and limits access to local produce, dairy and meat. President Donald Trump’s signature “Big Beautiful” legislation also includes deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and Medicaid benefits, depriving children access to medical care and food stamp benefits. When those reductions take effect in 2027, they will also limit access to healthy food at school: Eligibility for discounted meals is tied to SNAP participation. 

The contradictions extend to the MAHA Commission, chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. and established to tackle childhood diseases like diabetes and obesity. In May the commission released its first report asserting that chronic disease among children is at an all-time high, the result of kids consuming mostly ultraprocessed foods. The report, which initially won praise from both sides of the aisle for its critique of the U.S. food system, was undermined when media reports revealed that it included false and misleading research. In August Politico published a leaked second commission report that it called “friendly to the food and ag industries” and characterized as failing to propose strategies to reduce pesticide use or consumption of ultraprocessed foods. According to the White House, the official report offers a policy map to improve children’s health and is set to be released this week. 

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Trump’s embrace of Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic who promotes fringe ideas like urging fast food chains to use beef tallow as a healthier option to cook French fries, forged a connection between the MAGA movement and the wellness world. MAHA mom activists are a big constituent of that alliance; they want artificial petroleum-based dyes out of their food, pesticide-free produce, as well as the freedom to choose whether to vaccinate their children. Nutrition experts say ridding food of artificial dyes and pesticides is a worthy but ambitious goal that requires an expensive overhaul of the U.S. food system, which is driven more by business interests than public health. 

Improving school nutrition is a far more attainable and important target, advocates say. But they worry Kennedy’s open hostility toward school meal programs — coupled with cuts to SNAP and local farm to school programs — will impact the nutritional quality of school meals. 

In May during an event at Texas A&M with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Kennedy said, “School lunch programs have deteriorated where about 70% of the food that our children eat is ultraprocessed food, which is killing them. It is poison. We need to stop poisoning our kids and making sure that Americans are once again the healthiest kids on the planet.”

School food experts say Kennedy’s critique fails to acknowledge the complex logistics of food procurement and the care that goes into school lunches, as well as their nutritional value. The quality of school meals varies widely by district and state, but unlike grocery stores or restaurants, they are required to meet federal nutritional guidelines, explained Schwartz of the Rudd Center for Food Policy. Even without access to local farm products, schools are still required to provide fresh fruits and vegetables. 

“Research shows school meals are the healthiest meals that children are eating because they’re required to offer fruits and vegetables, milk, whole grains, and because they’re required to meet limits on sodium, calories and fat and added sugars,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the nonprofit school nutrition professional organization the School Nutrition Association. “Now is not the time to be cutting back these programs. It’s time to invest in them.” 

School food advocates worry more budget cuts may halt progress made since the 2010 passage of Michelle Obama’s Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which added more fruit, vegetables and whole grains in school cafeterias, while setting limits on sodium, sugar and fat.

“That act significantly improved the quality of school meals,” said Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “The pushback on what [Michelle Obama] tried to do with school meals was ferocious, and it came from Republicans. And so that’s the great irony, is that they say they’re doing exactly what she did, except she was focused on something important, and they’re focusing on color additives. … That’s the problem with the MAHA movement: It sounds good, but it’s embedded in an administration that’s doing exactly the opposite.”  

Kennedy touts success in convincing ice cream manufacturers to remove color additives and the Coca-Cola Company’s introduction of a new version of Coke that uses cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup — moves that Nestle has called “nutritionally hilarious,” since soda  and ice cream still pose the same chronic health risks despite the ingredient tweaks. 

And when it comes to school meals, major suppliers like Tyson and General Mills have already made strides in reducing artificial colors and flavors in their K-12 products, according to the School Nutrition Association’s Pratt-Heavner. School districts rely on those multinational food companies out of budgetary necessity, she added. 

“People say, ‘Oh, you’re serving chicken nuggets.’ They think we just open a box, throw it on a tray and throw it in the oven,” said food service director Sieck. “Well, ours may be a processed chicken product, but it’s still a healthier version. It has less sodium and fat, and whole grain breading, and we’re also making sure students are being offered a variety of fruits and vegetables too. You don’t get that at McDonald’s.” 

The deeper problem is funding. Meghan Maroney, who leads federal child nutrition program initiatives at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that changing school food systems is painstaking work. “It’s not just about the food industry reformulating, but distributors that work with schools need to have products schools can purchase,” she said.

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The gold standard for preparing nutritious school meals is cooking from scratch. According to the 2023 USDA Farm to School Census study, less  than a quarter of school meals involve what school nutrition professionals call “scratch cooking.” (In some states, like California, the percentage of scratch meals is higher.) “Folks working in schools would love to do more scratch cooking. They are clamoring for that, but that requires more funding,” Maroney said. 

“I will say, there’s been a lot of talk among the MAHA folks about removing harmful dyes and additives. Those are the kinds of buzzwords coming out of the movement. We think that’s an important part of making school meals healthy, but that’s just one piece of a larger puzzle,” said Lori Nelson, chief school food operations officer at the Chef Ann Foundation, which helps schools incorporate more scratch cooking into their food programs. “When you’re able to purchase food that’s whole and not processed, you know what’s in it. You don’t have to screen for any of these laundry lists of ingredients you can’t pronounce. That seems like the easiest answer.”

But Nelson admits that kind of radical change won’t happen overnight. In the meantime, she said, “School food professionals are going to continue to do what they’ve always done. They’re going to pivot, they’re going to adapt, they’re going to keep the meals going out to the kids.”

Copyright Capital & Main 2025