Education, Health Care

Experts tell Oklahoma lawmakers healthier school meals can improve health and test scores

October 19, 2026

Ray Carter

School lunches are a major source of calories for many children in Oklahoma and nationwide, but the nutritional quality of many of those meals can be quite low.

At a legislative study conducted by the Senate Rules Committee this week, experts told state lawmakers they can generate both health and academic improvement among children by boosting the quality of school meals.

“When you improve school food, it can help bolster academic outcomes in a statistically significant way,” said Nora LaTorre, chief executive officer of Eat Real, a doctor-founded organization that focuses on nutrition.

Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, noted that half of U.S. adults have diabetes or pre-diabetes, while three in four are overweight or obese, and 14 of 15 adults have sub-optimal cardio-metabolic health after accounting for blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels.

One in four children nationwide are overweight or obese, and one in three teenagers has pre-diabetes, he said.

“Almost no child in the United States has ideal diet quality,” Mozaffarian said. “We are far, far off from having healthy diets.”

He noted that children’s diets are better today than 20 years ago, but 50 percent of kids still have poor diet quality. The improvement is largely due to lowered consumption of sugary drinks compared to children two decades ago. However, ultra-processed foods are more common today than in the early 2000s, he noted.

Among low-income children, Mozaffarian said 64 percent have poor diets, and school meals account for about 12 percent of total calories consumed by that group. About one in four school meals today are of poor nutritional quality, he said.

While nutritious meals cost slightly more than the food currently served to many children at school, the added taxpayer cost is offset by reduced demand for taxpayer-funded health care later, officials said.

“This saves money,” Mozaffarian said. “Because there are health-care costs to these diseases.”

He said reform of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) program, better known as food stamps, could also help improve the health of many adults and children.

“We are drowning in diet-related disease and health-care-related spending from it,” Mozaffarian said.

At many schools, the nutritional change that occurs with better management can be dramatic.

“One of our schools removed 34 pounds of sugar per student per year,” LaTorre said.

Better nutrition not only improves students’ long-term health outcomes, but it is also associated with slightly higher performance on standardized tests.

“If you have healthier school lunches, there is increased test scores,” said Justin Gallagher, associate professor at the Department of Agricultural Economics at Montana State University.

Among the lowest-income students, the academic improvement associated with more nutritious meals is even greater.

“If we just look at those students, their increases in test scores are about 50 percent higher,” Gallagher said.

“Real food at school really improved academic outcomes and in a statistically significant way,” LaTorre said.

Santa Fe South High School, an Oklahoma City public charter school, is in the second year of operating its Child Nutrition Program independently, meaning school officials have much more control over the nutritional value of school meals.

Three years ago, before the school began operating the meal program independently, 59 percent of students were at or above the national average on math testing. Today, that figure has increased to 71 percent. On reading tests, the share of students who scored at or above the national average was 62 percent three years ago. Today it is 68 percent.

While a range of factors contributed to that improvement, Santa Fe officials said they believe improved nutrition has been one of the drivers.

The academic improvement generated by better nutrition is not equal to the benefit created by much smaller class sizes, but it provides significant academic benefit at a far lower cost, Gallagher noted.

A 1999 study in Tennessee found that a one-third reduction in class size improved student test scores, but at a cost of $4,157 more per student in 2025 dollars. The added cost of improved nutrition is about $375 per student and generates notable improvement in student test outcomes, even if not at the same level as dramatically smaller class sizes, Gallagher noted.

“Our kids are getting sick. They’re getting sick fast,” LaTorre said. “And the number one driver is actually the food. We really believe that real food is the fastest way to stop disease before it starts, that the best way to stop disease is to simply prevent it.”