Six out of ten students are eating taxpayer-funded meals at school, according to a press release from the Michigan Department of Education.

The number of school meals provided has increased since last year, but it may not equate to healthier students and could mean more wasted food.

In the 2023-24 school year, the state enacted a law to provide taxpayer-funded school meals for all students, with no limit on family income. As a result, the percentage of students eating breakfast and lunch at school jumped 26% and 20%, respectively. Last year five out of ten students at meals at school. This year it is six out of ten.

“Our children need to eat a healthy breakfast and lunch in order to learn,” said Michael Rice, state superintendent, in the press release.

Experts say that school lunches, in general, provide better nutrition than home and restaurant-cooked meals. The final results, though, depend on whether students eat the fruits, vegetables, and other healthy options on their plate.

The data on how many school meals are served were based on an average that combines K-12 school buildings in the state, according to Kenneth Coleman, spokesperson for the education department. Before the state made no-fee meals available to students, five out of ten students chose to eat a meal at school.

“The meal pattern provided by USDA dictates the type of food and the serving size by grade,” Coleman told Michigan Capitol Confidential in an email. He added that all food served is also regulated by the local health department. The state food safety code for handling leftovers, he added.

School meals may not always be as healthy as they should be. “Today, in the absence of any standard on added sugars, 90% of schools provide school breakfast with more than the recommended 10% of calories from added sugars, and 69% of schools exceed this limit for lunch,” according to a Science Direct report evaluating public school nutrition in the United States.

The report pointed to findings from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that found that although sodium has decreased in school meals, it still largely exceeds the amount found in dietary guidelines.

School meals can be better aligned with the dietary guidelines for Americans, Juliana Cohen, one of the report’s co-authors, told CapCon in an email.

Cohen concluded that school meals are on average one of the healthiest sources of food that children have access to in the United States. That benefit can be negated, however, if students throw away the healthier portions of their meals.

Catherine Cochran, policy associate at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, agreed with Cohen. “School meals are healthy — a 2021 study found that school meals were the healthiest source of food for kids — followed by grocery stores, other sources, worksites, and restaurants,” Cochran said in an email.

Meals have significantly improved since 2012 due to the Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act of 2010, Cochran said. The act removed junk food from schools and reduced salt and unhealthy fat while increasing fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

But a Journal of School Health study concludes that offerings in the National School Lunch Programs could vary greatly in nutritional quality.

As the majority of students have begun eating at schools, childhood obesity has increased over the last 20 years.

“Today, overweight children outnumber undernourished children,” according to School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children, a 2010 book published by the National Academy of Sciences.

Although students may be getting fruits, vegetables, protein and whole grains in school meals, some experts question the quality of the food.

“Your child’s public school lunches may be held to lower quality criteria than even fast food,” stated an article Public School Review. The article noted a USA Today inspection in 2009 revealed some schools were using meat from old birds.

Public School Review did not respond to an email seeking comment.

More than $1.2 billion of school food is wasted annually, according to an article in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

A 2016 nutrition study by the Student Nutrition Association revealed that fruit and vegetable waste is a major problem in school lunch programs.

“Fruit and vegetable plate waste increases costs for school nutrition departments and may compromise the health of children because they miss out on vital nutrients from the fruits and vegetables they do not consume,” said the association.

Most of the feedback given to the Grand Rapids climate action plan opposes it, according to public comment received through a records request.

The Wege Foundation pitched the plan for Michigan’s second-largest city, which houses about 200,000 people. More than half of public comments opposed one or more parts of the six-chapter plan.

Of the 42 public comments submitted to the city of Grand Rapids, 22 responses opposed parts of the draft plan while 18 supported it and two gave mixed feedback.

The plan spanned six chapters: Energy (more solar use), Healthy Homes (less electric use; income-based electric rates), Commercial buildings (less energy use), Transportation (more carpooling and cycling, denser developments), Natural Systems (more trees and rain gardens), and Food systems (more urban agriculture and composting, less food in trash). A majority of the feedback focused on commercial buildings.

The plan aims to reduce energy consumption by requiring building owners to report their energy use, creating building performance standards, and using tune-ups, audits, or retro-commissioning.

One respondent wrote: “It appears to be a feel-good, virtue-signaling, exercise undertaken by highly uninformed people without any appreciation for physics, economics, or common sense. That such a group has the chance of gaining effectively [sic] taxing authority through the City of Grand Rapids, en route to assessing fees to tax-paying, service-providing, business owners simply because we exist and house every business that makes the City of Grand Rapids function economically and socially is shocking.”

Other feedback welcomed the plan and said it didn’t go far enough.

“We are in a climate emergency and the department of sustainability are [sic] the City’s emergency response team,” the person wrote. “It’s time to be more aggressive and advocate for change like our life depends on it (because in this case, unfortunately, it does).”

The Wege Foundation has spent nearly $2 million over five years trying to get the city of Grand Rapids to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage electrification, according to documents obtained through a record request.

The money partially funded the salaries of climate change workers and pilot projects. The funding paid the salary of a healthy and sustainable buildings policy specialist and the nonprofit Community Collaboration on Climate Change, among other things, according to 10 documents obtained through a records request.

The city of Grand Rapids will release a full draft of its climate action and adaptation plan in December. Enactment will depend on the decision of city commissioners.

The funding sought three outcomes. First, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from city operations by 85% by 2030 compared to 2008 and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2040.

The draft aims to achieve and maintain 100% renewable energy for 2025, 2030, and 2040 modeling.

Finally, the draft aims to transition the city vehicle fleet to a low or no-emission fleet.

The city of Grand Rapids has 798 vehicles and equipment, according to Steve Guitar, city of Grand Rapids media relations manager.

The Grand Rapids 2030 District is a program of the US Green Building Council of West Michigan launched in 2015 in partnership with the City of Grand Rapids funded by the Wege Foundation.

The GR2030 is one of three districts in Michigan, along with Ann Arbor and Detroit, and one of 22 across North America. The GR2030’s work decarbonizes buildings and transportation, as aligned with the goals of the Paris Climate Accord.