Student chefs prepare to present their healthy lunch at a Capitol Hill briefing on school food reform in March 2010

Cooking Up Change Healthy Cooking Contest

Cooking up Change is a benefit, healthy cooking contest and a spotlight on the tremendous challenges of serving healthy school meals on the incredibly tight budgets that schools face. Culinary arts students from Chicago’s public high schools compete to create a healthy school lunch that exceeds USDA standards, incorporates a local food item, draws from ingredients commonly available to food service, and can be easily prepared in a school kitchen. 

Changing the Future of School Food

This year, the stakes are even higher – for the young chefs and for the future of school food. As the student teams assemble ingredients and develop recipes, Congress is considering the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, the federal legislation that provides funding and guidelines for school meals.

The Act has the potential to create a future for school food in which all schools have the resources to provide meals as healthy and tasty as the award-winning lunches the students design.

The unique strength of Cooking up Change comes from its power to elevate a meal and a message created by students so that it reaches the plates of their peers nationwide and the elected leaders whose decisions about school food policy affect students’ health so directly.

Learn More about the Child Nutrition Act

To learn more, visit HSC's Child Nutrition Act Resource & Action Center.

Raise Your Voice

This reauthorization offers a tremendous opportunity to create a future for school food in which fresh, healthy meals are the norm and all children have access to the type of comprehensive nutrition education that creates healthy habits for a lifetime.

Please join us in taking action for a healthy reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act.