02/13/2023

Project Bread Applauds USDA’s Proposed Science-Based School Meal Standards

Project Bread

Feeding Kids

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been working with schools to move toward long-term nutrition updates to ensure all school meals are healthy and nutritious for diverse student populations.

Project Bread commends this month’s announcement from the USDA proposing long-term updates to school nutrition standards based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) and feedback from relevant stakeholders across the country, including Project Bread.

Initially, the COVID-19 pandemic paused further movement toward DGA-aligned school meal standards stemming from the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. Since then, USDA has been working with schools to move toward long-term nutrition updates while recognizing the tremendous pressure school nutrition professionals still face to provide healthy school meals to students amidst continuing supply chain and staffing challenges.

How Project Bread is Supporting Federal Standards

As a statewide anti-hunger organization with more than 25 years of experience working to boost the participation, quality, and nutrition of school meals as a strategy to solve childhood hunger, we know that dietary behaviors established in childhood have a significant impact on an individual’s lifelong health. This is why Project Bread submitted comments in March 2022 on USDA’s transitional school nutrition standards release.

While Friday’s announced proposal did not include all of our recommendations, we are encouraged by USDA’s continued commitment to ensuring that children have access to healthy meals at school.

“We see school nutrition staff working hard every day to provide nutritious and delicious food for all students, thinking creatively and using the ingredients they have to prepare nourishing meals,” shares Sam Icklan, Director of Community Nutrition Services at Project Bread. “Part of that work is ensuring that meals are meeting USDA standards, and we’re proud to see how USDA is seeking to adapt to meet the needs of children who rely on school meals for their daily nutrition. These changes will be beneficial to school communities across Massachusetts and nationwide.”

Proposed USDA Standards

USDA’s proposed long-term school nutrition standard updates, which are be accompanied by a 60-day public comment period ending April 10, 2023 and are designed to be implemented in phases, include:

Added Sugars: This will be implemented in phases. Phase 1 will include limits on specific high-sugar products like yogurt and cereal. Phase 2 will include overall weekly limits across all meals. Phase 1 will be in Fall 2025 and Phase 2 will be in Fall 2027.
Milk: Allow some to-be-determined options of flavored milk with reasonable limits on added sugars. This will be in Fall 2025.
Whole Grains: Offer products that are primarily whole grain with the option for occasional non-whole, enriched grain products. This will be in Fall 2024.
Sodium: Reduce weekly limits gradually and in line with FDA’s recommendations for industry. This includes a 10% reduction by Fall 2025, an additional 10% reduction by Fall 2027, and a final additional reduction for lunch only by Fall 2029.

Project Bread applauds USDA for their commitment to improving child nutrition here in the Commonwealth and across the country. We are encouraged by the proposed limits on added sugars, whole grains, and sodium, and we hope that USDA will examine non-dairy milk alternatives and non-milk beverage options in future recommendations as we work to make school meals culturally responsive to all students.

Submit a public comment

Work in Schools

Through our work with school nutrition professionals in helping them produce meals from scratch that meet the improved standards, maintain labor costs, and decrease plate waste, we know that our schools are doing heroic work to ensure that children have access to healthy, delicious meals, and they need to be provided with the necessary resources and technical assistance to continue to make this happen.

Kristin Thibedau, head cook and manager at JFK Middle School in Northampton, shares how her team thoughtfully develops their school menu each year: “When we wanted to try out a new recipe with beef sliders with a special sauce, we worked closely with Project Bread Chefs to bring the recipe from an idea to the school menu. It’s essential that we think through how to scale the recipe size, test with nutrition staff, source USDA ingredients and evaluate nutritional content and meal crediting information, and of course, taste test with our students. For our beef slider recipe, we received fantastic feedback from the students last fall, and we were able to add it to our menu starting in December, a nutritious meal meeting all the health standards and a new favorite for JFK students!”