In early January, the Department of Health and Human Services and the USDA unveiled new dietary guidelines for Americansalong with a new food pyramid.
The USDA sets school meal 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 how the new food pyramid could affect schools:
Cutting down on ready-to-eat school meals will not be easy
Highly processed and ready-to-eat foods often contain added sugars and salt. Think mac and cheese, pizza, fries and individually wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
These foods are also a big part of many school meals, Nelson said. This is because schools often do not have the proper kitchen infrastructure to prepare food from scratch.
“A lot of schools were built over 40 years ago and they were built to reheat food. So they weren’t built as commercial kitchens for cooking,” Nelson said.
However, schools have been able to reduce sodium and sugar levels in recent years.
“They’re working with food companies to find a middle ground, to find recipes that meet (current) standards and appeal to students and that schools can serve given the equipment they have,” said Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokeswoman for the School Nutrition Association.
Further lowering of sugar and salt levels will likely require food companies to adapt their recipes and schools to prepare more meals from scratch, Pratt-Hevner said.
But it won’t be easy to set your sights on cooking from scratch. Recent study of school nutrition directors from the School Nutrition Association found that most programs will need better equipment and infrastructure, as well as more trained staff—and nearly all respondents said they will also need more money. “You can’t go from serving highly processed, heated and served products to instant cooking,” Nelson said. “It’s a transition.”
Protein-rich school meals will be more expensive
At the top of the new food pyramid are animal products such as meat and cheese. The new guidelines prioritize eating protein as part of every meal and including healthy fats.
“This could lead to a change in school breakfast standards,” Pratt-Hevner said. “There is currently no requirement for breakfast to include protein.”
A typical school breakfast today 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 required to provide protein under the USDA’s school breakfast program.
Current standards allow schools to serve either grains or meats/meat alternatives for breakfast, and Pratt-Heavner said, “Protein options … are more expensive than grain options.”
She said it’s unclear whether the USDA will require protein in its own category or whether the agency will consider milk sufficient to meet any new protein requirements.
Whole milk gets a lot of attention
Schools that participate in federal school meal programs are required to offer milk with every meal, although students do not have to take it. Until recently, an Obama-era governance only low-fat and skim milk allowed in schools.
But the new food pyramid emphasizes full-fat dairy products, such as whole milk. At the same time, recent federal legislation reversed the Obama-era rule and now allows low-fat and full-fat milk to be offered in schools.
Another thing to know about milk: Federal law also limits saturated fat in school meals — and whole milk has more of it than low-fat and skim varieties. But recent federal legislation now exempts milk fat from these restrictions.
What does all this mean for schools? They can now start serving whole milk and won’t have to worry about whole milk crossing their saturated fat limits.
It will take some time for these changes to permeate schools
While the USDA sets regulations for schools based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, it takes time to draft and implement new rules after new guidelines are published.
“The current school meal standards we are working on were proposed in February 2023, finalized in April 2024,” Pratt-Hevner said. “The first changes to menus in school chairs were not needed until July 2025.” Other changes are still being rolled out.
Which is to say: the new dietary guidelines won’t bring immediate changes to school chairs. They are 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 said, “the public will comment on those regulations and then the final rules will be drafted and issued.”
USDA then gives schools and school food companies time to update recipes and implement the new nutrition standards.
