At the end of April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced updated standards for school meals to be phased in starting next school year through 2027. The new rules target nutrients of concern in the child and adolescent diet, particularly added sugars, while also decreasing the cap on non-domestic food purchases and adding flexibility provisions to accommodate traditional indigenous diets in tribally operated schools.
Shifting the needle on long-term health is no simple task, but changes to school food standards are a critical piece of the puzzle. In the 10 years since the last update to school food standards, rates of childhood and adolescent obesity have remained concerningly high -- particularly among more vulnerable populations. Today, nearly one in four children or teens have overweight or obesity, and updated school meal standards may reduce unhealthy weight outcomes among these age groups.
Overall, the USDA changes signal an increased commitment from the federal government to improve children's dietary intake, and hopefully reduce their longer-term health risks.
A Closer Look at the New Standards
The new rules target added sugars, which are a key culprit in diet-related health risks among children. For example, during school year 2025-2026, the new standards impose product-based limits on the amount of added sugars in breakfast cereals, yogurts, and flavored milks. In the year following, the rules further limit all added sugars served in school meals to less than 10% of total daily calories.
The focus on added sugars is certainly a step in the right direction, but as others have noted, the rules did not go far enough with flavored milks. Those chocolate or strawberry milks often served in schools are the leading source of added sugars in the child's diet, and may provide nearly one-third of all added sugars consumed at breakfast and one half at lunch. The previously proposed rule changes would have banned these flavored milks in elementary schools altogether, which would be a prudent public health measure. However, significant opposition from the industry appears to have led to a removal of that change in the final rules.
Defenders of flavored milks often point towards wasted food as a reason to keep these tasty -- albeit less healthy -- beverages in front of our children. They argue that kids are more likely to consume highly palatable foods, and throw out ones they don't like. But the evidence does not stack up. USDA's own study shows that prior updated nutrition standards for schools led to healthier intakes and no appreciable change in wasted amounts of food.
Smaller pilot programs that have tested new standards -- including the replacement of flavored with unflavored milks -- find that in the short-term children may throw out less-palatable options, but these are less likely milk and more likely new vegetables and fruits. Furthermore, we know that popular media coverage often overstates the impact of healthier school food rules on wasted food.
So, if the rules missed an easy added sugar target, it was probably the flavored milks.
For researchers and clinicians like myself who dedicate their career to improving children's diets, it is easy to see some of the gaps in these new rules, especially when we compare them to the proposed changes that came 1 year prior. Early versions of the rule changes would have required nearly all weekly servings of grains to be whole, versus the status quo of 80% grains being "whole-grain rich," which means the majority of grains within a product are whole. We know that eating whole grains can reduce the risk of many chronic diseases, and that children are often well below recommended levels of whole grain intake. This makes the USDA decision to maintain the status quo a missed opportunity.
So too did the rules overlook original proposals to reduce sodium by 10% year-over-year. Instead, the final target is a 15% overall reduction of sodium in lunches and 10% in breakfasts by school year 2027-2028. Here too we see a weaker final rule, despite broad evidence that most U.S. children and adolescents consume sodium above recommended levels, and school food programs are some of the best ways to target sodium and reduce long-term health risks.
A Win Overall
So, will my colleagues and I gripe about some of these softened end points in the final rules? I certainly hope not (or at least not too much). These changes will likely improve the diets of millions of children, and many of us are eager to test that very hypothesis. It is important to not miss the forest for the trees here: sure, we could have done better in some areas, but the momentum and political will coming from the federal government is promising.
Those who wish to advocate for additional changes may want to step out of the weeds of counting whole grains and instead look towards additional structural changes that would elevate the U.S. school food program. For example, several other high-income countries have universal school meals that do not impose administrative burdens on school districts, not to mention the stigma associated with having to prove one's income eligibility. It is here -- at the top level -- where we should push for changes to the U.S. school food program.
The recent rule changes demonstrate a commitment to improving what children are eating at school. Now that we have built momentum to improve these meals, let's be sure millions more children get them.
Daniel A. Zaltz, PhD, MPH, is a social and behavioral scientist who studies global food policies and their impacts on different groups of people. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine. You can learn more about his work at www.danielzaltz.com.
Disclosures
Zaltz's research is funded by a variety of governmental and non-profit research grants from the U.S. and Canada. He has never received any funding from the food and beverage industry.