School food: point of view matters

This article discusses the origins of a new organizational effort—that of School Food FOCUS—structured to engage in systems level change at the intersection of child health, institutional school food service, and the wider food system. Now 4 years into its program development, FOCUS has organized itself as a collaborative network using multiple partnerships, participatory research, and peer learning to procure cost-effective, healthful, and sustainably produced school meals. While food procurement change could be viewed as a narrow scope of work, the authors share their perspective about the complexity of this work, which involves conflicting values about food, long-established institutional practices, knowledge drawn from a range of disciplines, and a massive food marketing campaign over the past 60 years that has fundamentally changed the way that Americans eat, including what children eat in schools. Using the experience of FOCUS as a lens, the authors also highlight a number of initiatives filling in some of the gaps in the safety net, suggesting that multiple pathways are being built to address both individual and institutional food behavior change so that children nourished with healthy foods could become the new ‘normal’ in the next generation.