How Public Schools Can Better Fight Food Insecurity

Exposure to nutritious food is something many of us, as university students, take for granted. Dining halls, from which we can get a balanced meal at the swipe of an ID card, are littered throughout campus and restaurants and supermarkets are not far away. Unfortunately, our privilege of having access to a diverse range of food options is not one shared by many St. Louis City residents. The 2019 Missouri Hunger Atlas reported that 23.3 percent of people who live in St. Louis City are food insecure, meaning that they do not have consistent access to safe and nutritious foods, whether due to financial reasons or physical distance. In other words, almost every 4th person, on average, you see while in the city may not know where their next meal is coming from.

Insufficient access to nutritious food is especially damaging for children. Children who grow up food insecure are likely to suffer from slowed physical and psychological development, require much more frequent hospitalization, suffer from chronic diseases in the future, and develop behavioral problems such as ADD, depression, anxiety, and trust issues. Many live in food deserts, regions where nutritious and diverse ranges of fresh foods are difficult to find, causing these issues to amplify. Despite this, there is one place children can go and get a guaranteed, healthy, and, often, free meal: public schools. For this reason, it is essential that students are properly nourished at schools due to the consistent access to nutritious foods they provide. 

I recently had the opportunity to talk to a St. Louis City public middle school employee about the issue of food insecurity for the school’s students. She stated that a large portion of the students grow up in food insecure households in food deserts. Due to difficulties accessing fresh food, these students consume a large amount of highly-processed, unhealthy foods from corner stores. She continued to describe how their lives at home translate to their food consumption behaviors at school; the school provides free, nutritious meals to many students, but students rarely eat them due to mandatory inclusion of healthy, but unappetizing foods such as whole-grains. Students tend to throw away the majority of their meals and eat vending machine food instead. For breakfast, the students would throw away fruits and only eat the items served with syrup. During lunchtime, the cafeteria salad bar is rarely touched, but when it is, the students only consume lettuce, dressing, and cheese, throwing away the tomatoes and cucumbers that are included.

She largely attributes this behavior to a lack of exposure to a variety of foods and a lack of knowledge regarding proper nutrition. Due to many students living in food deserts, they simply are unaware of many foods due to a lack of access. The employee gave me an example of this; some students were unaware that cabbages can be purple or that grapes could be green. When shown a purple cabbage or green grapes, they would have difficulty identifying them. She continued by discussing her experiences taking some of her students to a nearby supermarket. She recalled how the students were shocked that the store had a deli inside of it; they had never seen a food market that sold freshly prepared food.

The Missouri Coalition for the Environment describes healthy food consumption as reliant on pricing and affordability of food, geographic access to food, access to cooking tools and knowledge, cultural relevance (i.e. one’s familiarity with a food), and nutritional knowledge. Though public schools can’t change their students’ home addresses or socioeconomic standings, schools can improve health outcomes by implementing nutrition education and exposure to new kinds of foods in their curriculums at school and by finding a better compromise between providing meals that are healthy and meals that the students will actually eat.

Without awareness of the variety of foods that exist and the importance of nutrition to their developing bodies, students have no incentive to change their unhealthy diets. Literacy about how to make the best choices for one’s body is key to encouraging young kids to make healthy choices independently. By implementing lessons about concepts such as food groups, eating in moderation, and reading and understanding important information like nutrition facts labels, students could become more aware of how their diets influence their bodies. In addition, exposing students to new foods, whether through trips to supermarkets or in-class demonstrations, can help a student familiarize and normalize themselves with healthy foods they may not be comfortable with. By associating proper diets with improved academic and athletic performance, instructors could further motivate students to eat healthier options. Furthermore, by adjusting the legislature that mandates inclusion of healthier food options in school lunches to having more appealing options, schools can better incentivize students to eat their meals. Including options such as white bread or processed fruits, though a compromise, can reduce food waste and serve as a stepping stone towards healthier habits.

Public schooling is a service that is funded to provide basic necessities and securities that students may be deprived of home. Schools are often the only places many children are guaranteed a nutritious and filling meal. By implementing nutrition education and changing laws regarding health requirements of meals, public schools can better utilize the resources provided to them to help nourish students that are food-insecure and build the foundation for a life of healthier food consumption habits.

Photo courtesy of Casey Lehman, licensed from Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.