Obama-era rules for school lunches rolled back

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is not shy about sharing his taste for chocolate milk.

“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. It was one of his first days on the job.

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, HungerFree Kids Act of 2010 and that Michelle Obama, the former first lady, 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 like many Trump administration moves to reverse Obama-era policies, they come with some controversy.

First, the grains: The Obama-era rules required that schools must serve entirely “whole grain-rich” foods, meaning 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 grainrich. 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 administrators have struggled to find food products that meet these standards while also pleasing students. Schools have been able to request exemptions from the rules if they demonstrate financial hardship, and the government has said the most popular requests have been for regional staples like grits in the South and tortillas in the Southwest.

But the current administration asserted the exemptions process was not sustainable and some schools found it too burdensome.

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.

It is hard for many students to even tell when foods like tortillas are made with some whole grain flour, said Cooper, who is also president of the Chef Ann Foundation, which provides grants to help schools serve healthier food.

“It’s not like in the 1960s when whole grain was like eating a hockey puck,” she said. “Do we really need more white bread in our schools?”

As for the milk, the Trump administration is allowing schools to serve low-fat flavored milks, rather than just the nonfat version. This change was already in place for this school year, but Thursday’s announcement made it permanent.