Balanced

The success of a new school menu item is often decided before launch day. Michelle Saletan, Balanced's Director of Institutional Support, works with food service directors across the country. Her advice: do the pre-work. That means taste testing with students, naming dishes for flavor, starting with familiar recipes, and getting teachers on board early. Her most memorable point: one teacher saying "ew" in the lunch line can undo weeks of recipe development. One teacher saying "I tried it, it's delicious" can do the opposite! Which part of the rollout does your district find hardest?

This tip went out in our September K-12 newsletter: Offer vs. Serve: The Milk Waste Opportunity When staff hand every student a carton by default, unopened milk goes from tray to trash resulting in massive waste and higher costs. Two fixes, no menu changes: → Move milk to the end of your line → Have your cashier verify creditability before offering a carton. Three of five components, at least ½ cup of fruit or vegetable among them, milk not required Offer vs. Serve already gives students the right to decline. Reinforcing it at the point of service cuts plate waste and beverage spend immediately! Worth knowing alongside it: under USDA's January 2026 guidance implementing the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, NSLP operators may offer nutritionally equivalent nondairy beverages to all students, many of which are dramatically higher in fiber. Offer them to everyone and you no longer notify your state agency, and students requesting a substitute for non-disability reasons no longer submit a written statement. That's one tip from one issue. Subscribers also get our free Offer vs. Serve 1-pager, the components, the quick tips, built to print and post at the line. Monthly, practical, no fluff. Link in the comments.

"They don't have the time, they don't have the money, or the resources to train their staff, which is where we come in." Michelle Saletan, Balanced's Director of Institutional Support, on the three barriers school nutrition teams face when adding more plant-forward options: First, budget. The reimbursement a school receives for each meal is less than $5 and that has to cover labor, trays, and everything else, not just the food. Second, procurement. Sometimes the product simply isn't available to the district. Third, staff training. As Michelle puts it, tofu is a foreign protein to most people. You can't hand a kitchen team something unfamiliar and expect it to work without support. The workaround she points to isn't a new line item. It's using what's already on the USDA Foods list and pairing it with recipes students have already approved. Food service directors don't need to be told what to do. They need the training capacity to do it! #SchoolNutrition #ChildNutrition #Fiber #SchoolLunch

Beans. Michelle Saletan, Director of Institutional Support at Balanced, has a simple one-word answer. What makes the answer useful isn't just the ingredient, it's the implementation. Michelle treats beans as an addition to food students already select, not a new item that needs its own rollout: → Already serving brown rice? Stir in black beans. → Already running a salad bar? Add crispy garbanzo beans. Beans bring fiber and protein to the tray, and they work within the budget and labor realities food service directors are actually operating in. For most students, the change registers as a better version of a familiar dish rather than something new to accept or reject. That's often what effective menu change looks like: not a headline item, but a series of small, durable additions to what's already working. Balanced's Institutional Support team partners with K-12 districts on menu analysis, recipe design, and procurement. For free, with no contracts. Food service directors: what's the bean application that's worked best in your kitchens?

Save money. Add fiber. Serve meals students will actually eat. That is the promise of beans, peas, and lentils, and it is what we will be digging into this week when I represent Balanced at the South Carolina Department of Education's State Agency Training. Thank you, Ellen Mason, for the opportunity to present. My session, "Harvesting Values: Growing Menus with Beans, Peas, and Lentils," covers the cost comparison with animal proteins, how legumes line up with the current Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the case for blended proteins, and what these menu shifts can do for participation rates in your district. Looking forward to an energy-filled session with local food service directors and their teams. #SchoolNutrition #SchoolMeals #Balanced #FiberRich #SouthCarolina #BeansPeas&Lentils

Audrey Sanchez, Executive Director of Balanced, will be speaking at the Reducetarian Foundation Summit in Raleigh, NC, October 23–25, 2026. The eighth-annual summit will take place over three days at The Raleigh Marriott City Center featuring 100+ speakers and a full expo showcasing delicious plant-based food. Summit draws researchers, advocates, and operators who are all working the same problem from different angles. Balanced's angle is institutional: what happens to fiber intake across a district when plant-forward becomes the default rather than the alternative. If you're working in school nutrition and planning to attend, say so below. We'd like to know who's in the room and you can get your ticket in the top comment.

Running a school nutrition program means juggling a hundred things at once. Menus, crediting, budgets, staff training, and somehow still finding time to try something new. That's why we built the Plant-Powered School Meals Newsletter, made for K-12 food service directors who want to serve more plant-forward meals without the extra lift. Issues include:  🌱 Grant and funding opportunities to help you stretch your budget  🍽️ Real inspiration from schools already making plant-forward menus work  📋 Free resources and recipes, ready to use right away No fluff. Just practical support from people who get what your job actually looks like. Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/gjdFV6kn #SchoolNutrition #K12 #PlantPowered #ChildNutrition

As we approach the end of August and schools prepare to welcome students back, I am reflecting on the work Balanced's 2026-2027 Plant-Powered School Meals Cohort members have done to prepare for this moment. For these dedicated school nutrition professionals, the work began months ago with menu planning, recipe development, and staff trainings. Over the summer, some have gone above and beyond. Here are a few standouts for me as I reflect on the past few months and the privilege of managing this program that supports such amazing work: 🌟 Abigail Cano, VP of Food Services at Glenwood Academy, welcomed students and families to campus for a meet-and-greet featuring samples of new plant-based breakfast smoothies and muffins. She gathered feedback on the options and on their meal program generally, giving her school community a stake in the menu changes she is making. 🌟 Yesenia Charles, School Nutrition Director at San Ysidro School District, held a taste-testing event with her staff to help develop her new Potatoes with Soyrizo recipe before the school year. 🌟 Jason Tepper, Executive Chef at Alexandria City Public Schools, spoke at the School Nutrition Association annual national conference to promote the expanded use of pulses on school menus, amplifying his impact beyond his program. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the conference and Jason's session along with my team member, Olivia Rother. Can't wait to see where this school year takes us!

One change every school could make this week: cut up the fruit. Not a new vendor. Not a new menu. Just prep. Michelle Saletan's point is that whole fruit competes with a 20-minute lunch period, and the lunch period usually wins. Peeling an orange, wrestling a whole apple, working around a stem: that's time kids don't have, and it ends in the trash can. Segments, slices, sticks. Same food, same budget, dramatically different plate waste. Back-to-school week is the easiest time to change a prep routine. Worth trying before the year settles in.