Dr. Marlene Schwartz: Local foods cut from school lunch programs, food banks
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Expert on Camera
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently ended two programs that helped schools and food banks buy food from local farmers and ranchers, cutting over $1 billion in federal funding for these purchases.
On April 30, 2025, SciLine interviewed Dr. Marlene Schwartz, a professor of human development and family sciences and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health at the University of Connecticut. See the footage and transcript from the interview below, or select ‘Contents’ on the left to skip to specific questions.
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Introduction
[00:19]
MARLENE SCHWARTZ: My name is Marlene Schwartz. I am the director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut, and I’m also a professor in human development and family sciences. And my areas of research really are focused primarily on schools and trying to improve the school environment in terms of health, so: better nutrition, physical activity, and then also the charitable food system, so trying to really ensure that the food that’s available to people when they go to food pantries is health promoting food that will really help protect them against diet related diseases.
Interview with SciLine
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently ended two programs that helped schools and food banks buy food from local farmers and ranchers. Could you explain the two programs?
[01:06]
MARLENE SCHWARTZ: There were two programs. One was really designed primarily for food banks, and the idea was to provide federal money to food banks so that they could purchase foods from local producers—so local farmers—and really support that local agriculture. The other was for schools. And schools frequently participate in the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, so these funds would allow them to purchase more food for those programs. And a thing that was going to be an exciting development was these dollars were also available for child care centers. So this was introduced last fall. There was a lot of excitement about it. But then more recently, the USDA cut these programs—over a billion dollars of funding that would have otherwise gone into communities. So it makes it harder for places like schools and food banks to purchase food locally.
How will these cuts affect families and school children?
[02:09]
MARLENE SCHWARTZ: These cuts will affect families and children, because, clearly, children are eating often two of their meals, five days a week at school. And not being able to purchase fresh produce locally means it’s either going to be more expensive, or schools will need to rely on either frozen or canned produce instead. And so that is concerning, because we really want children to get as much fresh produce as possible, because it tastes good, and it also is a way to kind of introduce them to more fruits and vegetables.
How will these cuts affect farmers and ranchers?
[02:53]
MARLENE SCHWARTZ: These cuts will also affect farmers and ranchers. One of the things that’s really helpful for them is to be able to predict purchasing. And so when there’s funding available like that, and they know that they can set up their contracts and they’re guaranteed buyers of the products that they are growing or producing, it makes their job much better. And so the loss of these funds, especially so quickly, I think is going to have a very negative effect on them, because all of a sudden, the buyers that they were counting on no longer have the money to purchase from them.
What does your research say about the impact of including nutritious foods in school lunches?
[03:37]
MARLENE SCHWARTZ: We’ve done a lot of research on the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program, and there’s been, you know, changes over the years. These programs have always been required to be compliant with the dietary guidelines for Americans, so they’ve always had nutrition standards. But these were strengthened significantly with the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which was passed in 2010 and really was implemented over the subsequent years. And we’ve done a number of studies showing that that improved what was available in the schools, and it also improved what children were actually eating. And so there was a large national study that was done by the USDA that also documented nationwide that there was a big improvement in the sort of healthfulness of school meals, and that the children who were eating the school meals were eating a healthier diet.
What does your research say about the impact of including nutritious foods at food banks?
[04:36]
MARLENE SCHWARTZ: Food banks historically have focused primarily on the volume of food. So they measure their success in terms of the pounds of food that they distribute into a community. But in, I’d say, probably the last 10 to 15 years, there’s been more recognition that the families that rely on the charitable food system often have a higher risk of diet-related illness—so things like high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes. And so there’s been a very concerted national effort among food banks across the country to try to improve the nutritional quality of the food that they provide. So some of the research that we’ve done has been really coming up with a set of nutrition sort of standards and a measurement system so that food banks can track the nutritional quality of what they are providing. And then that allows them to really document and demonstrate the improvement over time. And I have to say, I’ve been really impressed—just getting to know a lot of food bankers across the country—how dedicated they are to providing the absolute healthiest food that they can to the families that they serve.
How many Americans use food banks?
[05:50]
MARLENE SCHWARTZ: There are some data on the number of people that use the charitable food system, and it’s, as you can imagine, it sort of changes from year to year. So it was around 40 million before the pandemic. It went up, actually as high as 60 million during the pandemic. And it’s now seemed to have gone down a little bit more—not quite all the way to pre pandemic levels, but it’s lower than it was at the height of the pandemic.
How does the school nutrition environment influence students’ overall diets?
[06:25]
MARLENE SCHWARTZ: There’s been research to look at whether having a healthier lunch at school affects your diet overall, and the data really suggests that that does make a meaningful difference in what children’s overall diets are. And there was one study that was done that actually looked at the nutritional quality of the food that children get from different settings. So schools was one of them, and then other was food they get at home that was purchased at the grocery store, or food they get at restaurants. And that study found that the food children were getting at school was actually the healthiest food of all of the sources of food that children had.
How important is it for children and students to eat nutritious foods?
[07:09]
MARLENE SCHWARTZ: We’ve known for really decades now that American children’s diets were not consistent with recommendations. We know that children are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. We know that they are consuming too much added sugar, too much saturated fat, too much sodium. So you have a few different ways to try to influence that. One is obviously education, and education is super important. Another is to try to limit the sort of reasons why they’re eating the less healthy foods, one of which is marketing and food marketing directed at children. So there have been efforts to try to change that. But honestly, the biggest difference, I think, is trying to affect what’s in schools. Most kids are in schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program. It’s a very, very popular program across the entire country. So if you can affect what is being served in schools, you can affect the diets of millions of children every single day.
What are other ways to improve nutrition quality in schools and food banks besides federal funding?
[08:07]
MARLENE SCHWARTZ: The loss of the federal funding just puts more pressure on the other sources of funding that both schools and food banks rely on. So there’s often state funding. Some states have programs to support farm-to-school purchases. And then, depending on your state, it can come down to the school district itself and how much they have in, you know, sort of their budget in order to support their meal program. But it’s tough because the federal funding tends to be the most significant portion of the funding for the school meal program. So there’s still the sort of standard USDA funding for the National School Lunch Program, but it’s really not very much money when you kind of look at it by meal and this additional funding would have made a big difference.
