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Surprising Science

Innovating School Lunches

Fighting the scourge of childhood obesity, the California start-up Revolution Foods is bringing tasty and nutritious school lunches to school districts that lack money to provide them. 
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What’s the Latest Development?


Revolution Foods is a California-based start-up, begun in 2006, that now supplies nutritious lunches to school kids across the nation. With less than $3 to work with per lunch, the business has developed an efficient supply chain and culinary techniques that allow it to thrive even in the midst of deep cuts across most state education budgets. Kristin Richmond, one of the company’s founders, has seen first hand the importance of nutrition in the learning process. While establishing a school in Kenya, she saw malnourished students physically unable to concentrate. 

What’s the Big Idea?

Sustainable businesses that benefit society. Childhood obesity is a growing problem in the U.S., one that affects both our children directly and, years down the line, the cost of our unsustainable healthcare industry. Making sure kids eat right from an early age develops good habits that carryover into adulthood and acts as preventative medicine against many of the disease, like heart disease and hypertension, that obesity makes more likely. Revolution Foods currently serves 70,000 meals per day yet is sometimes forced to turn down needy school districts for its own budgetary reasons. 

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