July 10, 2024
Grant to help make school lunches healthier for kids
Chef Ann Foundation will use $275,000 grant for Colorado program to convert kitchen operations from processed foods to fresh, scratch-based meals.
Conner Keller, left, and Corey Nead prepare meals for kids in the Boulder Valley School District, which the Chef Ann Foundation has worked with for years.
Many Colorado school lunches could soon be healthier, and they could be provided by upskilled staff, thanks to the Chef Ann Foundation and a grant from Kaiser Permanente in Colorado.
The Chef Ann Foundation’s Healthy School Food Pathway helps schools convert heat-and-serve menus, which are heavy in processed foods, to whole-ingredient, scratch-cooking programs that provide kids with tastier, healthier meals. It also upskills school nutrition workers, providing them with additional career pathways through a 7-week, paid pre-apprenticeship program for those with little or no experience in school food or scratch cooking, and a 9-month apprenticeship program for pre-apprenticeship graduates.
A 3-year, $275,000 Kaiser Permanente grant will support the design phase, pilot phase, and inaugural cohort for the pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs.
Soon-to-be-named Colorado school districts will participate as host sites, helping prepare this next generation of school food workers with the skills and knowledge to operate healthy school meal programs.
To help schools make the switch to scratch-prepared, healthy meals, the Chef Ann Foundation provides:
- Resources, guides, recipes, and help converting food-preparation processes, operations, and equipment
- Online courses for professional development and comprehensive training
- Grant programs and technical assistance
- Workforce development and training programs for school food professionals
The Chef Ann Foundation’s overall goal is to reduce the rate of diet-related diseases in school children, which can lead to chronic health problems in adulthood. Many health experts have connected the rise in obesity to the consumption of processed foods, and since the 1970s obesity rates in children have tripled, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity can eventually lead to a higher risk of developing other health problems as adults, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and more.
Studies by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health have also linked the consumption of ultra-processed foods to mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.
“Providing school children with healthy foods that taste good can have a lifelong positive effect,” said Laura Smith, executive director of programs for the Chef Ann Foundation. “By empowering school food professionals and their districts to increase scratch cooking, we are laying the groundwork for districts to provide the highest quality, most delicious meals possible to their students.”
The design phase of the program has brought together school food service directors, state agencies, community colleges, and nonprofit partners to support program design and to develop strategies for district engagement, recruitment, and enrollment, as well as advisory board structure and future funding development in Colorado.
“We support schools across Colorado because they are cornerstones of healthy communities, and this work has an impact beyond school walls,” said Curtis Robbins, Kaiser Permanente Community Health program manager.
To date, the Chef Ann Foundation has impacted the school food eaten by nearly 3.4 million children and reached over 14,000 schools in all 50 states with their programming. And more than 2,300 food service professionals have enrolled in the foundation’s online learning courses.
