Putting together a school meal isn’t easy.
“It is a puzzle essentially,” said Lori Nelson of the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes scratch cooking in schools.
“When you think about the guidelines, there’s so many different pieces that you have to meet. You have to meet calorie minimums and maximums for the day and for the week. You have to meet vegetable subgroup categories.”
Districts that receive federal funding for school meals — through, for example, the National School Lunch Program — must follow rules set by the Department of Agriculture (USDA).
And those rules may be changing soon.
In early January, the Department of Health and Human Services and the USDA unveiled new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, along with a new food pyramid.
The USDA sets school nutrition standards based on those dietary guidelines, which now place an emphasis on protein and encourage Americans to consume full-fat dairy products and limit highly processed foods.
Here’s what to know about how the new food pyramid could impact schools:
Cutting back on ready-to-eat school meals won’t be easy
Highly processed and ready-to-eat foods often contain added sugars and salt. Think mac and cheese, pizza, french fries and individually packaged peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
These foods are also a big part of many school meals, said Nelson. That’s because schools often lack adequate kitchen infrastructure to prepare meals from scratch.
“Many schools were built 40-plus years ago, and they were built to reheat food. So they weren’t built as commercial cooking kitchens,” said Nelson.
Even so, schools have been able to bring sodium and sugar levels down in recent years.
“They’ve been working with food companies to find a middle ground, to find recipes that meet [the current] standards and appeal to students and that schools can serve given the equipment that they have,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association.
Bringing sugar and salt levels down further would likely require that food companies adapt their recipes and that schools prepare more meals from scratch, Pratt-Heavner said.
But leaning into scratch cooking won’t be easy. A recent survey of school nutrition directors by the School Nutrition Association found that most programs would need better equipment and infrastructure as well as more trained staff — and nearly all respondents said they would also need more money. “You cannot go from serving heavily processed, heat-and-serve items to scratch cooking immediately,” said Nelson. “It is a transition.”
Protein-rich school meals will come at a higher cost
At the top of the new food pyramid are animal products such as meat and cheese. The new guidelines prioritize consuming protein as a part of every meal and incorporating healthy fats.
“That could cause a change in school breakfast standards,” said Pratt-Heavner. Currently, there is no requirement for school breakfasts to include a protein component. A typical school breakfast may consist of fruit, milk, and a cereal cup or muffin, with some schools offering breakfast burritos or sandwiches as well.
If schools were mandated to provide protein under the USDA’s School Breakfast Program, they would need additional funding as protein options are generally more expensive than grain options. The current standards allow schools to serve either grains or meats/meat alternates for breakfast. It is uncertain whether the USDA would categorize protein separately or consider milk to be sufficient to meet any new protein requirements.
Whole milk has been gaining attention recently, with federal legislation now allowing schools to serve reduced-fat and full-fat milk in addition to low-fat and nonfat options. Although whole milk contains more saturated fats, the recent legislation exempts milk fat from the saturated fat limits in school meals.
Despite the new dietary guidelines emphasizing whole fat dairy, it will take time for these changes to reach school cafeterias as new regulations are drafted and implemented by the USDA. The process involves public comment on proposed regulations, drafting of final rules, and giving schools and food companies time to adjust recipes and adhere to the new nutrition standards.
