Districts & Schools

Boulder, Colorado
Boulder Valley School District

Offering Kids a New (Healthy) Menu

Boulder Valley School District is reinventing the school lunch.

Highly processed foods have been eliminated as have artery-clogging transfats and bad-for-you fructose corn syrup. Refined sugar and flour are used minimally.

Walk into any school cafeteria in the district and you’ll see healthy, wholesome food. Locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables are served daily. Roasted chicken has replaced highly processed chicken nuggets. Every school has a salad bar.

“Previously, our food service employees’ tools of the trade were a box cutter and a can opener,” says Boulder Valley School District Superintendent Chris King. “We weren’t cutting up fresh food and cooking it. Now it’s fresh food cooked from scratch.”

Students wash down their wholesome meals with Colorado milk free of hormones and antibiotics. And because breakfast is now served in every school, many kids get an extra boost at the start of their day.

Studies show that good food is good for students. “There is a lot of research that supports the link between good cognition and good nutrition,” says King. “Clearly when you eat well, your brain and body perform better.”

Within the first month of school, the district topped its most lunches ever served in one day: 10,000. Typically, the district serves closer to 6,000 meals. “We are bringing more kids back into our cafeteria, even though the cost of a lunch went up 25 cents,” says King.

For more information, visit www.bvsd.org/schoolfoodproject, or contact Chief Financial Officer Leslie Stafford at leslie.stafford@bvsd.org.