Politico’s Helena Bottemiller Evich examined how food companies that were once fighting healthier school-nutrition standards are now embracing them because of profits derived from churning out healthier fare.
Many manufactures tweaked their products to sell to schools after the passage in 2010 of the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act that set higher nutritional standards for school food. Domino’s Smart Slice, for example, a whole grain-rich, lower-fat and lower-sodium pizza, was developed just for school cafeterias. The pizza will be served in 5,000 schools in more than 44 states.
While some entities, like the School Nutrition Association, will be fighting to roll back the tougher standards during the reauthorization debate in Congress this fall, many of the companies in the story want the standards to stay in place. They argue that having already retooled their operations, it would be costly to reverse.