Increasing Whole Grains, Limiting Beef in School Lunches Can Reduce Environmental Impact

Meals served in the National School Lunch Program are developed with nutrition, cost, and youth preferences in mind, with little room or direction to consider environmental impact. Using data from over 2.2 million real-world lunches, researchers at Tufts quantified the environmental footprint of each lunch served to see if they could determine patterns and form recommendations for more sustainable lunches. They found that low impact school lunches had “20% more whole grains, nearly 20 times more nuts and seeds, and four times less animal protein than high impact lunches.” As a result, the authors concluded that “increasing whole grain requirements and providing serving size or frequency limits for beef” are the two most effective recommendations for reducing the environmental impacts of the National School Lunch program. 
Nature. 2022 June 23;3(138). doi: 10.1038/s43247-022-00452-3. (Stern AL et al.)