{"id":218097,"date":"2026-03-13T13:23:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T13:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/218097\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T13:23:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T13:23:06","slug":"sacramento-schools-need-federal-support-for-healthy-meals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/218097\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacramento schools need federal support for healthy meals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Emily<\/p>\n

Emily Vang, 8, right, eats her school lunch other students in the cafeteria at Oak Ridge Elementary School in Oak Park on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023. Sacramento schools need federal support to buy locally grown produce, boost farmers and serve healthier meals.<\/p>\n

Lezlie Sterling<\/p>\n

lsterling@sacbee.com<\/p>\n

We work in very different kitchens: One of us runs Mulvaney\u2019s Building and Loan, a celebrated farm-to-fork restaurant in Sacramento. The other oversees food service for the Sacramento City Unified School District, serving more than 40,000 meals daily to students, 74% of whom qualify as economically disadvantaged. But we share a common mission of connecting people with high-quality, locally grown food.<\/p>\n

We also share a common challenge: Without federal support for local food purchasing, the system that benefits farmers, students and entire communities remains out of reach.<\/p>\n

At Mulvaney\u2019s B&L, every Tuesday, John Bledsoe arrives with his hogs. Craig McNamara delivers olive oil and walnuts from down the road. Nina Prychodzko shows up with 40 pounds of ripe grapefruits. We\u2019ve built real relationships with farmers and ranchers.<\/p>\n

The model works \u2014 Mulvaney\u2019s success relies on great local food \u2014 but restaurants alone cannot provide the stable demand that California\u2019s farmers need to truly thrive.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where institutions like school districts come in. When Sac City Unified received $294,600 in Local Food for Schools funding<\/a> from U.S. Department of Agriculture, we purchased mandarins, rice, pears, grapes, honey and beef from California producers. We buy rice from True Origin Foods, which grows it just 25 miles from our central kitchen. When a school district commits to buying thousands of pounds of produce, that\u2019s the significant, stable demand that allows farmers to plan ahead, hire staff and invest in equipment.<\/p>\n

Serving children 40,000 meals per day, our purchasing decisions impact the entire regional food economy. When we can buy food locally, dollars circulate in our community instead of flowing to out-of-state corporations. Producers can expand, which benefits schools, restaurants and other institutions.<\/p>\n

Before becoming a chef, I (John) was a kid in public schools who brought bologna sandwiches for lunch \u2014 and I hate bologna. Some kids had money for Taco Bell burritos at school. I was jealous and sometimes took a burrito without paying. Stealing food is the ultimate shame, and no child should have to worry about their next meal. That is why we believe that all children should get healthy, delicious meals at school.<\/p>\n

But when the USDA eliminated Local Food for Schools funding<\/a>, schools had to scale back partnerships with local growers. Without dedicated funding for local purchasing, we\u2019re forced to buy the cheapest foods available, even when there are better alternatives growing right down the road.<\/p>\n

This hurts everyone: Students lose access to fresh, high-quality whole foods; local farmers lose a significant buyer and our regional economy loses the economic multiplier effect of keeping those dollars local.<\/p>\n

Federal support for local food purchasing through programs like Local Food for Schools is not a subsidy. More than 500 California farmers participated in these programs.<\/p>\n

School meals are critical to the success of millions of students who eat them every day, and we have shown how \u2014 with a little additional funding \u2014 they can be more nutritious and support local agriculture. USDA should allow states and school districts the flexibility to use existing funding to buy local food rather than being limited to processed items from the commodity program.<\/p>\n

We need a federal partnership to scale these successes nationwide. Our students and farmers are counting on us. Let\u2019s make the smart investment in America\u2019s future \u2014 one local meal at a time.<\/p>\n

John Trujillo is the executive chef at Mulvaney\u2019s Building and Loan. Kelsey Nederveld is the nutrition services director at Sacramento City Unified School District and a coordinator for OneKitchen, an education and mentorship program focused on getting chefs out of the kitchen and into advocacy.<\/p>\n

Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emily Vang, 8, right, eats her school lunch other students in the cafeteria at Oak Ridge Elementary School…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[99987,99986,121,123,122,99985,99989,99988],"class_list":["post-218097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-farm-to-school-program","tag-local-food-purchasing","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-sacramento-schools","tag-school-meals","tag-usda-local-food-for-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}