State of Obesity 2025: Interview with Jessica Gould, RD, SNS
Jessica Gould, RD, SNS
Director of Nutrition and Warehouse
Littleton, Colorado Public Schools
TFAH: Let’s begin by asking you to describe the Littleton (CO) School District and your role there.
Ms. Gould: I have been the Director of Nutrition and Warehouse for Littleton Public Schools for almost 11 years. Our district is just shy of 14,000 students.
We have 21 schools, two of which are charter schools that we transport food to and nineteen have full kitchens. Eighteen percent of our students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Under Colorado’s community eligibility provision* (CEP) we have eleven CEP schools and nine non-CEP schools. We provide breakfast at all of our schools except one of the charter schools and lunch at all of them.
TFAH: What is the importance of school-provided meals for the students you serve?
Ms. Gould: Kids don’t always have the opportunity to influence how their day starts. It might be because some families can’t afford to provide nutritious meals or for some families it’s because parents are pulled in so many directions. I see our meal service as setting kids up for success. We all know that you can’t learn when you are hungry. That’s our mission – to provide the support through nutritious foods for our students so they all have the same opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive in school.
TFAH: There are a lot of pressures on school systems right now – increasing levels of food insecurity, increasing food costs, and reduced federal funding for nutrition assistance programs. What strategies do you employ to meet your program’s mission?
Ms. Gould: Yes, we certainly are feeling these pressures. Districts do a lot of things to try to manage these challenges. We are very thoughtful about how we plan our menus. One thing that we specifically do is to try to use an ingredient in multiple ways. That helps our procurement – larger orders ensure that we are able to get the products we need, and at better prices. If you have a good core ingredient you can use it in multiple different recipes. Having a central warehouse also allows us to take advantage of discounted, surplus or bonus commodities. That very much impacts our bottom line.
We also sell a la carte items – that helps us bring in additional revenue. Some people have concerns about snack items being sold in schools. I like to remind them the snack items we sell follow the Smart Snacks regulations and are more nutritionally sound than many of the snacks kids bring from home. This includes our snack items being sold in appropriate portion sizes.
Another thing we try to do as much as possible is make some of the ingredients we use from scratch but that’s not always possible in all of our schools. This summer we built a central production kitchen. We plan to make some of our sauces and our bakery items from scratch at the central location. That will help us improve the nutritional quality of what we are serving in terms of sugar, sodium and fat content and use of whole grains.
Looking at your buying power is another important thing to do. School districts can work with other school districts on joint purchasing agreements to save on the unit cost of a food item.
TFAH: What is the status of Colorado’s Healthy School Meals for All Program?
Ms. Gould: Colorado voters adopted a Healthy School Meals for All program in 2022. The issue today is that the
revenue to support the program isn’t enough to cover the program costs so this November there will be second ballot measure to strengthen the funding for the program. If it doesn’t pass, the state may determine to provide free meals to all at CEP schools only.
TFAH: What role do school meals for all play in the community’s overall food security, nutrition, and health promotions goals?
Ms. Gould: First, the stigma that’s often associated with receiving free meals goes away very quickly, which is delightful to see. Before the Healthy School Meals for All program, students who were eligible for free meals didn’t want them because it wasn’t the cool thing to do. Our participation, students eating school meals, has increased exponentially. Our students see it as a normal thing to eat meals at school versus do your parents have the money to pay for your meals. Another benefit is what kids are eating. Packed lunches, for example, often start out at the beginning of the school year with lots of healthy ingredients but get less healthy as the school year continues whereas the nutritional value of our meals is consistent. Kids are getting fruits and vegetables; they are getting whole grains, low fat proteins, and milk.
TFAH: A special feature within our report discusses ultra processed foods and their role in the obesity crisis. How do you think about the role of ultra processed foods in school meals? What are the challenges to reducing the amount of ultra-processed foods in your school system?
Ms. Gould: First, there are a lot of different definitions for ultra processed foods. That in and of itself is challenging. We need to better understand what the target is. Based on some definitions, hummus might be an ultra-processed food due to the stabilizers in it or the food we process in our central kitchen could be considered ultra processed. It is important to understand that many
school districts depend on processed foods for a handful of reasons. It could be that breakfast is delivered to classrooms so it needs to be packaged, or it could be related to the district’s ability to hire staff to prepare food. If the direction is to limit the use of ultra-processed foods in school meals, there needs to be funding to go with that. If you are using ultra-processed foods because you can’t afford to hire food preparation staff then you need funding to be able to hire that staff and that assumes that you are going to be able to find them if you can afford to hire them.
TFAH: New limits on added sugar in breakfast cereals, yogurt, and flavored milks are included in federal nutrition standards for school meals that take effect this school year. Are they improving your program?
Ms. Gould: The breakfast cereals, yogurt and flavored milks that we offer all have been updated or previously met the new limits on added sugar. I think it is important to mention that the products that we serve (for example, the cereals) are not always the same products families buy in the grocery store. Our products have been formulated specifically to meet our meal standards
and many times are significantly lower in sugar than what a family can purchase at the store. For us, our baked goods that we bake in our schools are what we have worked to modify or we
are serving less of them to meet these new standards. The crux of all of this is that school nutrition programs want to be able to reduce sugar in the meals we serve and to make food from
scratch but doing so takes money. We want to make positive changes but need funding to be able to do so.
TFAH: To what degree is local food part of your program?
Ms. Gould: We focus a lot on local foods and the local food system. We’ve built strong partnerships with local farmers and local food manufacturers. The buying power of the school district can help support the local food environment. We want to use bulk buying with budgeting to be able to buy local and support local food systems as often as we can.
TFAH: You are a member of the Board of Directors of the School Nutrition Association and in that role have spoken to members of Congress about school nutrition programs. What did you tell them? What do you wish they understood better?
Ms. Gould: Many times when we are on Capitol Hill speaking to members of Congress or their staff it’s a fairly basic conversation. We help them understand what school nutrition teams do. We want them to understand what we want to be able to do to support students and how they can help us continue to do the good work we are doing. I’m sure to talk about the fact that students are our future and that we need to make sure we are investing in our future. It’s about ensuring that all of our programs are appropriately funded so we can achieve all of the things we are asked to do.
When I meet with members of the Agriculture Committee I’ll get into more specifics about removing some of the red tape that complicates our mission to provide students with amazing meals. I’d
like to see some changes so departments like mine can focus on feeding students and spend less time on administrative work. There is a lot of duplicative work that goes on behind the scenes of our programs. I also emphasize funding and our local foods program, both which the legislators have a direct connection with.
TFAH: Same question about your conversations with state legislators.
Ms. Gould: In Colorado we are in a budget shortfall, so cuts are being made. Education in the state is already underfunded so we want to make sure we aren’t taking away from other parts
of education funding. But, we still need to stand up for our students’ nutritional needs. When Healthy School Meals for All was passed we told our families that we would be feeding all kids in
the state for free. When I speak to state legislators now, I ask them to help me do that. There’s a lot on the line with the upcoming ballot I mentioned earlier and the long-term funding of our program.
TFAH: Are you worried about the proposed changes to the SNAP program and how that could increase demands on your program?
Ms. Gould: Yes, 100 percent. Reduced numbers of families enrolling in or staying in the SNAP program will affect our budget because that’s one of the ways we certify eligibility for free school meals, which is a concern for our CEP status. Additionally, it all comes down to ensuring kids have access to good nutrition. If their family isn’t getting assistance through SNAP, they are going to come to school hungry. We will need to find a way to feed them that may include kids’ incurring negative balances [costs of unpaid meals] and unfortunately that becomes a new stigma that gets attached to a child as they make their way through the school system.
TFAH: Any closing thoughts?
Ms. Gould: For my team and me it’s all about serving kids the nutritious meals they need. We serve delicious food, it’s nutritious and prepared with love, and as we plan our meals we’re
thinking about what kids actually want to eat while meeting our regulations. Child nutrition professionals across the country are in this career because they care, because they understand what it takes to serve nutritious meals that students want to eat, and because they see the value of investing in our country’s future. We need the support of everyone to help advocate for the funding to carry out our mission.
*Community eligibility provision (CEP) determines the percentage of a school’s student population eligible for free meals (absent universal free meals programs) using eligibility measures from other programs such as SNAP or Medicaid. This interview was conducted in August 2025. It has been edited for length and clarity.