August 4, 2025

Phuc Nguyen 

12th Grade

Westminster High School

School lunch is a core memory for each and every one of us. Whether it be the mysterious spicy chicken patty or the slightly spoiled milk, these are the food items that we grew up having in the American education system. Though along the way, we start to recognize the poor nutritional values of these school lunches—some even compare them to prison meals. Not to mention the leftover food being wasted on a daily basis by the students and kitchen staff. Because of these prominent issues, the new era of AI (artificial intelligence) will assist the American education system in making mindful decisions regarding school meal programs for its students. 

In the mentally demanding school environment, having new dishes can boost the students’ energy and well-being by encouraging stronger appetite and healthy eating habits. However, one obstacle that arises with this constant demand for new school meal ideas is the creative block among kitchen staff. Having to come up with new dishes while meeting the USDA nutrition standards isn’t a simple task. But with AI’s prompt-driven technology, schools can quickly solve menu dilemmas by inputting available ingredients to generate balanced and healthy recipes. As a result, school kitchen staff are able to creatively dish out different variations of meals that check off the USDA nutrition requirements, ensuring dietary nourishment for all students. 

Additionally, AI also gives suggestions on ways to repurpose long-stored ingredients into different meals that prevent students from getting bored with the dish. This can be exemplified through Wichita Public Schools in Kansas, which turns black beans into three different meals that can be rotated throughout the week. Apart from creating trendy and creative meal variations, AI also aids in converting measurements from home-scale to large-scale or from metric to customary unit of measurement, and vice versa.  

Besides the impact that AI has on creative meal-prepping, food preservation, and sustainability have also become significantly easier to manage. Portion sizing is a common issue for many school kitchens, as serving an adequate meal portion with minimal food waste is difficult to maintain. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an estimated 30-40% of the food supply is wasted, resulting in a huge concern in the bigger image of our environment. To address this problem, an application known as food waste analysis—composed of AI-enhanced cameras that scan and categorize different kinds of food waste—is implemented as an effort to reduce waste products. This technological implementation uses AI to calculate the approximate cost of food wasted, allowing the school to organize their supplies and food production considerably. Many schools, such as Yale University, have shown great improvement after applying this method in their kitchen setting, achieving the goal of a 20% reduction in food waste over the course of one month.

Overall, AI positively enhances students’ wellness by bridging nutritional gaps and expanding students’ palates; ultimately promoting healthier lifestyles along with intellectual growth. Through dietary improvisations suggested by AI, schools are able to optimize their meal planning to nourish students without unnecessary additives such as sugar, a leading factor that contributes to the increasing obesity rates. On top of that, with the balanced diets provided by the AI program, students are provided with the correct nutrients for their developing brain. This results in a better learning environment and academic success by giving the students a boost in concentration as well as cognition. Hence, AI has progressively transitioned students’ physical and mental health, allowing them to improve their immune system and maximize their learning capacity. 

Undoubtedly, the growth of AI in the food industry is recognized by experts as a threat to their careers, especially dietitians and nutritionists. However, despite the ease and accessibility of AI, it simply cannot replace the emotional intelligence of a human. School dietitians are trained to assess multiple factors before coming up with meal plans, including the school’s financial state, local supply chains, and the cultural preferences of students. Therefore, the concern regarding AI taking over the job market for dietitians is, more often than not, an overgeneralized stigma caused by irrational fears. Instead, AI should be seen as a tool that assists dietitians in the process of making nutrition-dense meals for the purpose of students’ growth and development.