Power Lunch Concept Takes Over School Lunch Menus

As many schools struggle to balance budgets and control spending, there is an increasingly more common focus to place additional funding into school lunch programs. In many states, school districts are providing healthier school lunches, removing foods high in fat and trans fat.

Originating as a term known to be Lunchpower, the concept of improved nutritional guidelines for school lunch has some origin among Minnesota schools. By continuing to serve pizza and hotdogs, but with modified nutritional value, schools in these towns found that students will choose to eat healthy.

Nationally, the concept has taken over in many school lunch rooms with school most commonly referring to the change to nutritional lunch programs as "power lunch". The power lunch concept is a two-fold approach in some school settings; offering the typical "junk foods" that kids enjoy with modified recipes, or offering fully nutritional lunch options such as that found in the salad bar option.

This change in school lunch nutrition concepts is designed to not only improve the health of children while they are at school, but also provide some underlying education in making smart food choices. For many children, the concept of eating hot dogs and pizza is understood to be unhealthy and, when asked, would normally opt to avoid the turkey dog or veggie pizza. But, when presented with these nutritional options at school, many students are finding they enjoy the healthy alternative.

While not all children are making the same health food choices outside of the school setting, there are those who can readily recite the nutritional value options provided in school. With this understanding, many school districts feel the healthy food choices are serving an added purpose; by instilling a lifelong understanding of healthy food versus unhealthy food.