When federal universal free school meals ended in 2022, elementary teachers in Anchorage, Alaska, say they watched hunger, worry about meal costs and a shift toward sugary snacks move into their classrooms.
Concentration slipped, disruptive behavior rose, and some teachers began buying food out of their own pockets for students they noticed were going without.
Those observations come from a qualitative study of 25 kindergarten through sixth-grade teachers across six Anchorage elementary schools, published in September 2026 in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
Teachers were interviewed about what they saw during the 2021-2022 school year, when meals were free for every student, and the following year, after the federal waiver expired.
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What the teachers described
While every child ate for free, teachers said families and students seemed less stressed about food, and fewer kids arrived at lunch anxious about whether they could pay.
The main downside they flagged was more food waste on trays.
After the policy ended, the picture shifted.
Teachers reported fewer students participating in school meals, more students appearing hungry during the school day, and children asking about the cost of a tray.
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Several teachers said they had started supplying snacks for kids who had nothing to eat.
They also observed more students turning up with ultra-processed and sugary foods from home, and said hungry afternoons often ran into concentration problems and behavior flare-ups.
The study is qualitative, meaning it captures what teachers perceived in their own classrooms rather than measuring what children actually ate or weighed.
It is also limited to one district in one state, so it does not prove a national trend on its own.
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Why teachers were asked at all
Lead author Deborah Olarte, an assistant professor of nutrition at New York University, argues that classroom staff sit close enough to see the day-to-day effect of nutrition policy.
The teacher perceptions line up with what larger federal data has already shown.
A U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service analysis of the 2022-2023 school year found that food insufficiency among school-aged children was 1.5 percentage points higher in states that did not extend universal free meals than in states that did, a 9.8 percent relative increase from a 15.3 percent baseline.
Children in households earning 185 to 250 percent of the federal poverty line, a group that often earns too much to qualify for free meals but still struggles with food costs, saw the largest jump.
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Where the policy stands now
Universal free school meals became available nationwide during the pandemic through USDA waivers that expired at the end of the 2021-2022 school year, returning most districts to income-based eligibility.
Since then, a growing number of states have passed their own Healthy School Meals for All policies, and Congress is again considering a federal bill, the Universal School Meals Program Act of 2026, which would offer free breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack to every U.S. student regardless of income.
The nutrition side of the debate is not only about hunger in the moment.
Ultra-processed foods and sugary drinks are a known driver of poor diet quality in children, and pediatricians have repeatedly warned parents about how quickly sugary drinks alone can push kids past recommended limits, as covered in earlier warnings about sugary drink servings.
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Parents worried about a specific child's eating, concentration or weight should raise it with the child's pediatrician, who can look at the full picture, including school meal eligibility.
Families who think their child may qualify for free or reduced-price meals can apply through their school district's food services office at any point in the school year.
This article is made and published by Ida-Marie Palm Varbæk, who may have used AI in the preparation.