CleanEats Coalition

The FDA opened a fresh safety review of BHA in February, a preservative on the market since 1961. Here's what it is, who already banned it, and how to check your cafeteria's ingredient lists.

Federal law makes every school meal program keep a written wellness policy, and it names students as people who get a seat at the table. Here's how to find yours and use it.

Federal rules allow school garden produce in cafeteria meals. Local policy is what gets in the way. Here's how students can fix that.

Federal rules say most grains in school meals must be whole grain-rich. But 'whole grain-rich' only means half whole grain, and a brown color proves nothing. Here is how to read an ingredient list in 30 seconds and what to ask your cafeteria.

In 2015, the World Health Organization's cancer agency put processed meat in its highest risk category. Pepperoni, ham, hot dogs and breakfast sausage are still regular items on school menus. Here is what the label means, what the category does and does not say, and how to find out what your cafeteria is serving.

Pick up a box of frozen chicken nuggets, a bag of crackers, or a tub of microwave popcorn and read the ingredients all the way to the end. There's a decent chance you'll find four letters that mean nothing to most people: TBHQ. It's a preservative, it's cheap, and it's completely legal. This post covers what TBHQ is, why food companies love it, what we do and don't know about its health effects, and how you can check whether it's in the food your school serves. You don't need

A single school pizza lunch can carry more than half the sodium a kid is supposed to eat in an entire day. Add a side of canned green beans, a roll, and a cup of dressing, and the tray gets saltier fast. Most students never see a number, because nobody prints it on the menu. There is a federal limit on sodium in school meals, and a tighter one is coming on July 1, 2027. This post covers what the limit is, why salt hides in foods that don't taste salty, and how students can fi

Picture a school lunch tray with a carton of apple juice on it. Now picture the same tray with a whole apple. On paper, under federal meal rules, both can count as a serving of fruit. On your body, they do very different things. This post covers what the rule actually says about juice, why a cup of juice is not the same as a piece of fruit, and what students can do to push their cafeteria toward the real thing. What the Federal Rule Says About Juice Under USDA's school meal s

Here is a strange fact about the white on your food. The same mineral pigment that makes house paint bright and sunscreen opaque has also been used to make candy shells, icing, and creamers look whiter. It is called titanium dioxide, and since 2022 it has been illegal in food across the entire European Union. In the United States, it is still allowed. This post covers why Europe pulled it, why the FDA has not, which states are now going after it in school food, and how you ca

When Lincoln Public Schools tells parents which item on the menu still contains artificial dye, the reaction is almost always the same. Andrew Ashelford, the district's nutrition services director, says parents respond with, "Wow, that's it?" The answer is the gelatin base used in the fruited gelatin cups. That one item is the whole story in Nebraska's biggest district, and it matters for every student trying to get dyes out of their own cafeteria. This post covers what Nebra

A cup of school yogurt can legally carry 12 grams of added sugar. A bowl of breakfast cereal can carry 6 grams per ounce. A carton of chocolate milk can have 10 grams in every 8 ounces. Those aren't loopholes. Those are the new limits, and they're the first time the federal school meal rules have put a number on added sugar at all. This post breaks down what USDA's added sugar rule actually requires, what changes in July 2027, and what students can do now to make sure your ca

Most school boards set aside a few minutes at every meeting for public comment. Often it's three. Most nights, nobody signs up to talk about lunch. That means the person who does gets the full attention of the people who approve the food contracts, the budgets, and the policies behind every tray in your cafeteria. This post walks through why that microphone matters, what to say in three minutes, and how to follow up so your comment turns into something that sticks. You don't

Red No. 3 has been illegal in lipstick and nail polish since 1990. It stayed legal in the frosting on a cupcake for another 35 years. On January 15, 2025, the FDA finally revoked the dye's approval for food. But manufacturers get until January 15, 2027 to comply, and that date is now about three and a half months away. This post covers what the ban actually says, why a deadline is not the same as a clean tray, and three things students can check at school before it arrives. W

In 2026, USDA handed out nearly $20 million in Patrick Leahy Farm to School grants. That is the biggest single-year investment in the program's history, and it was split across dozens of projects in every corner of the country. Odds are, your school wasn't one of them, and nobody told you the money existed. This post breaks down what the grant pays for, why it matters for what ends up on your tray, and how a student with no budget and no title can push a district to go after

Every August, kitchen tables across the country turn into paperwork stations. Parents dig up pay stubs and W-2s, kids get nagged to turn in the free-and-reduced-lunch form before the deadline taped to the fridge. Two miles away, in the same district, another school skipped that whole ritual months ago. Every student there eats breakfast and lunch free, no form, no pay stub, no colored ticket to hand over at the register. That difference isn't luck, and it isn't a wealthier sc

If your cafeteria menu board ever brags about Jersey tomatoes or a dairy two counties over, that's not marketing. It's a federal procurement rule called geographic preference, and it's the one place in USDA regulations where a school is legally allowed to turn down the cheapest bid because of where the food came from. That rule just got rewritten. USDA published a proposed update on September 9, and the public comment window closes October 9. At the same time, the grant money

Walk past the trash cans in your cafeteria on any ordinary Tuesday and look at what is actually in there. Whole apples, not bitten. Sealed milk cartons. String cheese still in the wrapper. A bag of baby carrots nobody tore open. Every one of those items was handed to a student who did not want it, and in most schools that student has exactly one legal option: throw it away. Except there is another option, and it has been federally permitted since 2016. The USDA calls it a sha

Pull up your school's breakfast menu and count how many mornings offer something with protein in it. An egg, a cheese stick, a yogurt cup, anything. At a lot of schools the honest answer is two or three days out of five, and at some it's zero. That is not a mistake by your nutrition director. It is exactly what the federal rules allow. The School Breakfast Program and the National School Lunch Program are two different programs with two different rulebooks, and almost nobody

There is a good chance the chicken in your cafeteria's nuggets started out as plain raw chicken, bought by the federal government, with nothing else on it. No breading. No phosphates. No sodium, no binders, no natural flavor. Just chicken, in a bulk case, purchased from an American farm on behalf of your school. Then your district signed a form that sent it to a factory. This post covers the federal program that makes that happen, why nutrition directors use it, who keeps the

Next time your cafeteria serves something in a wrapper, ask to see the box it came out of. Somewhere on the ingredient list, usually near the end, there will be a line that says natural flavor, artificial flavor, or both. It is two words. It looks like nothing. It is one of the shortest entries on the label. That line is also the only place on a federally required ingredient list where a company is allowed to skip the names of what it actually put in the food. Here is how tha