Starting in school year 2012-13, the school meal programs began to undergo widespread changes, including updated nutrition standards for meals, additional lunch reimbursement for meals that met the standards, and rules affecting the price charged for full-price lunches. The School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study collected data in school year 2014–15 and was the first, comprehensive national assessment of the programs since these major reforms began.
The findings described in this webinar are based on two analyses. One that estimated the percentage of daily and weekly lunch menus that met the updated nutrition standards, and another that examined the nutritional quality of the lunches using the Healthy Eating Index-2010.