lunch programs

Mississippi has a major obesity epidemic and the state is fighting back - starting with children.

The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) announced Monday that 267 schools in Illinois will participate in the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program (FFVP) during the 2012-13 school year.

You can start to say goodbye to mystery meat at school cafeterias.

Lunch prices at Columbia Public Schools likely will rise again next school year.

Six high school students from the Chicago Vocational Career Academy were scheduled to serve Congress a lunch Thursday that featured chicken raised without antibiotics, just like much of the chicken now on the menu in public schools back home.

Remember school lunches? Some of it was good -- the cookies, sometimes the pizza, mostly the items that would make any self-respecting nutritionist cringe. But in the past 15 years or so, schools have come under fire for serving a hot mess of carbs, salt, and too many trans fats.

Lean finely textured beef, the low-cost ammonia-treated beef additive with the unappetizing nickname “pink slime,” will be out of some area school cafeterias next school year.

As schools are hard at work adding more whole grains and boosting fruits and veggies to revamp school lunch menus in line with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) new school lunch guidelines, chocolate milk has already undergone a makeover that schools, parents and kids can all feel good about.

What began as a pilot program in Hall and two other Georgia school districts to get more more locally grown produce on school menus has now expanded to include 14 school systems in the state.

Salem's school superintendent says boneless lean beef trimmings, also known as "pink slime," are probably being served in Salem school lunches, but he doesn't think there is any health risk to students.