“I wouldn’t be as big as I am today without chocolate milk,” Perdue told reporters in May 2017, while discussing his plan to relax Obama-era school lunch rules.
This past week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced its final plans to lower nutrition standards for grains, flavored milks and sodium in school cafeterias that were part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 and that former first lady Michelle Obama had advocated.
The changes, all of which will go into effect by July, apply to school meals that qualify for at least some federal reimbursement. They may seem relatively minor on paper, but they come with some controversy.
First, the grains: The Obama-era rules required that schools must serve entirely “whole grain-rich” foods, meaning that the product — whether it is pizza, pasta or hamburger buns — must contain at least 50 percent whole grains.
Under the new rules, only half of the grain products on the cafeteria’s weekly menu must be whole grain-rich. Theoretically, that means schools could serve all whole grain-rich food three days a week and food made with refined grains the other two days.
The Trump administration asserts in the new rules that administrators have struggled to find food products that meet these standards while also pleasing students.
Not all food service administrators have problems with the current rules. Ann Cooper, food service director for Boulder Valley Schools, in Colorado, said the district served only whole grain-rich foods and never received complaints.
The Trump administration is allowing schools to serve low-fat flavored milks, rather than just the nonfat version. This change was in place for this school year, but Thursday’s announcement made it permanent.
The rationale, according to the new rules, is to make sure children keep up their milk consumption.
“The kids told me that the flavored milk, which was limited to nonfat, was not as tasty as they would like,” Perdue said at the May 2017 news conference.
To back up the rule change, the Agriculture Department cited its own study concluding that milk consumption per person had decreased from 2000 to 2016, though the data is not specific to children.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.