Students who depend on eating at school for their one — and sometimes only — meal of the day will be able to more easily find a location for free meals during the summer. The expansion of the federal Summer Food Service Program will provide more meals to children and teens 18 years and younger...

What’s for lunch? How about Sweet Potatoes Chicken Quesadilla, a healthy slaw with cumin-lime crema and a Grilled Pineapple Downtown with graham crackers, cinnamon and apple reduction? And it’s all less than 730 calories and costs $1.14! Sounds like an impossible gourmet meal, but that’s the recipe that a team from Santee Education Complex cooked up...

On Friday, 19 students from seven LA Unified schools will participate in a cook-off that will send a team to compete nationally in Washington, D.C. Their task: to create a nutritionally balanced school meal for $1.14, the district’s lunch budget. Their challenge is not unlike one the massive LA Unified Food Services division is facing: how to feed more than...

LA Unified is making no bones about wanting to change the chicken industry, and federal officials visiting the district Thursday say they’re on their way to doing it. LA Unified became the first large school district in the nation to contract for antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken and turkey in a vote Tuesday. On Thursday, visiting...

Mikelah Wynn, 11, looked skeptically at the tall man in the suit who sat down with her and her friends as she opened up her breakfast Thursday morning. The man was Kevin Concannon, USDA Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, who came from Washington, D.C., to her fifth-grade class in Winnetka to celebrate the...

Overcoming lingering technical and logistical problems, eight remaining LAUSD schools will begin providing free breakfast in the classroom within the first two weeks of the coming school year, district officials said. That will complete the largest school breakfast program in the nation after more than three years of planning, said Laura Benavidez, project manager for the...

In a new position statement, a coalition of food professionals from the nation’s six largest school districts, including LA Unified, is asking for triple the amount of money now provided per school lunch by the USDA and allowing for more free meals as well as autonomy on how to serve them. The Urban School Food Alliance, which also...