How the new food pyramid could impact school lunch and more : NPR

Preparing a school lunch is not easy.

“It’s basically a puzzle,” said Lori Nelson of the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes scratch cooking in schools.

“When you think about the guidelines, there are a lot of different things you have to meet. You have to meet the calorie minimums and maximums for the day and the week. You have to meet the 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 these rules could soon change.

In early January, the Department of Health and Human Services and the USDA unveiled new dietary guidelines for Americans, as well as a new food pyramid.

The USDA establishes school nutrition standards based on these dietary guidelines, which now emphasize protein and encourage Americans to consume full-fat dairy products and limit highly processed foods.

Here’s what you need to know about the impact the new food pyramid could have on 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 individually wrapped macaroni and cheese, pizza, fries, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

These foods also make up an important part of many school meals, Nelson said. Indeed, schools often lack adequate kitchen infrastructure to prepare meals from scratch.

“A lot of schools were built over 40 years ago and they were built to heat food, so they weren’t built like commercial kitchens,” Nelson said.

Despite this, schools have been successful in reducing sodium and sugar levels in recent years.

“They worked with food companies to find common ground, to find recipes that met the [the current] standards and attractive to students and that schools can serve given the equipment they have,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association.

Further reducing sugar and salt levels would likely require food companies to adapt their recipes and schools to prepare more meals from scratch, Pratt-Heavner said.

But getting started in scratch cooking won’t be easy. A recent survey of school nutrition directors by the School Nutrition Association found that most programs could use better equipment and infrastructure as well as more trained staff — and almost all respondents said they would also need more money. “You can’t go from serving heavily processed dishes, reheating and serving, to cooking them right away,” Nelson said. “It’s a transition.”

High-protein school meals will cost more

At the top of the new food pyramid are animal products like meat and cheese. The new guidelines prioritize eating protein as part of every meal and incorporating healthy fats.

“This could lead to a change in school breakfast standards,” Pratt-Heavner said. “Currently, it is not required that breakfasts contain protein.”

Today, a typical school breakfast might include fruit, milk, and a cup of cereal or a muffin; some schools may serve breakfast burritos or sandwiches.

She said schools would “absolutely need more funding” if they were to provide protein under the USDA’s school breakfast program.

Current standards allow schools to serve either cereal or meats or meat alternatives at breakfast, and Pratt-Heavner said, “Protein options…are more expensive than grain options.” »

She said it was unclear whether the USDA would require protein in its own category or whether the agency would consider milk sufficient to meet any new protein needs.

Whole milk gets a lot of attention

Schools that participate in federal school lunch programs are required to offer milk with every meal, although students are not required to take it. Until recently, an Obama-era rule allowed only low-fat and fat-free milk in schools.

But the new food pyramid emphasizes full-fat dairy products, like whole milk. At the same time, recent federal legislation reversed that Obama-era rule and now allows schools to serve skim or whole milk.

One more thing to know about milk: Federal law also limits saturated fat in school meals — and whole milk contains more than low-fat and fat-free varieties. But recent federal legislation now exempts milk fat from these limits.

What does all this mean for schools? They can now start serving whole milk, and they won’t have to worry about whole milk pushing them over the saturated fat limits.

It will take some time before these changes impact schools

While the USDA establishes regulations for schools based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, it takes time to write and implement new rules after new guidelines are issued.

“The current school nutrition standards that we operate under were proposed in February 2023 and finalized in April 2024,” Pratt-Heavner said. “The first menu changes in school canteens were only necessary in July 2025.” Other changes are still being rolled out.

In other words: the new dietary guidelines will not bring immediate changes to school canteens. This is only the first step in a regulatory process that will take time.

“We’ll have to see what the USDA comes up with,” Pratt-Heavner said.

Then, she added, “the public will comment on these regulations, and then the final rules will be drafted and published.”

The USDA then gives schools and school food companies time to update recipes and implement the new nutrition standards.