When chef Dan Giusti left Noma — repeatedly named the world’s best restaurant — he wasn’t chasing another culinary accolade. He was chasing a belief that everyone deserves good food.

With ultraprocessed diets and chronic disease on the rise, Giusti’s company, Brigaid, is betting that trained chefs, not reheated cafeteria meals, can transform school lunch for millions of American children.

That challenge is growing increasingly urgent. More than half of the calories Americans eat come from ultraprocessed foods, and nearly 30 million students rely on school lunches every day. Those meals have become a high-stakes battleground over children’s health.

As evidence mounts of contaminants in school meals and rising chronic-disease risks in children, parents, lawmakers and states are pushing to overhaul what kids eat at school.

But at home, millions of families still struggle to eat well. A Pew Research Center survey found that many adults often choose taste over nutrition, can’t find or afford fresh ingredients, or simply don’t know what healthy eating actually looks like anymore.

Those gaps put even more pressure on schools — and on the people trying to change what ends up on kids’ trays.

Giusti founded Brigaid in 2016 to help close that gap. He left fine dining to build a team of chefs willing to trade restaurant prestige for the challenge of bringing real culinary skill into public institutions — from schools to hospitals, prisons and assisted-living facilities — and replace heat-and-serve meals with scratch cooking.