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Gradual implementation of nutrition updates, to include less sugar, set to begin in Fall 2025
WASHINGTON, April 24, 2024 – Today, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced major steps to promote the health of America’s children through school meals. Nutrition standards for school meals will be gradually updated to include less sugar and flexibility with menu planning between Fall 2025 and Fall 2027. The Department arrived at these changes after listening closely to public feedback and considering the latest science-based recommendations from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The new rule continues the work of the Biden-Harris Administration to address both food and nutrition security.
K-12 schools serve nutritious breakfasts and lunches to nearly 30 million children every school day. These meals are the main source of nutrition for more than half of these children and help improve child health.
“We all share the goal of helping children reach their full potential,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “Like teachers, classrooms, books, and computers, nutritious school meals are an essential part of the school environment, and when we raise the bar for school meals, it empowers our kids to achieve greater success inside and outside of the classroom. Expanding on this major milestone, the Biden-Harris Administration will continue to partner with schools, districts, states and industry to build on the extraordinary progress made to strengthen school meals.”
The final rule previewed today, is a significant step toward advancing the Administration’s national strategy to end hunger and reduce diet-related disease by 2030 set forth at the historic White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health in September 2022.
“The new standards build on the great progress that school meals have made already and address remaining challenges - including reducing sugar in school breakfasts. These updates also make it easier for schools to access locally sourced products, benefiting both schools and the local economy,” said USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service Administrator Cindy Long.
Key updates to the nutrition standards to support healthy kids include:
Added Sugars
Milk
Sodium
Whole Grains
Supporting Other Food Preferences
Supporting Local Food Purchases
Additionally, starting in Fall 2025, schools will have limits on the percentage of non-domestic grown and produced foods they can purchase, which will enhance the role of American farmers, producers, fishers, and ranchers in providing nutritious foods to schools.
For more information about how school meals will be strengthened, see these resources:
What’s Staying the Same
School meals will continue to emphasize fruits and vegetables; whole grains; and give kids the right balance of many nutrients for healthy, tasty meals. School nutrition professionals are local experts in their communities and will continue serving meals that their students want to eat, while also prioritizing cultural and religious food preferences.
Nutritious School Meals Are Invaluable to Everyday Families
School Districts Empowered to Meet Updated Standards
Today’s announcement comes a few weeks after the Spring 2024 Heathy Meals Summit in St. Louis, Mo., where hundreds of school nutrition professionals gathered to celebrate and share their innovative efforts to enhance the nutritional quality of school meals. As part of USDA’s Healthy Meals Incentives Initiative, 264 small and rural school districts each received up to $150,000 to equip them with the resources to improve their meal service operations and help them meet these updated nutrition standards.
Through the School Food System Transformation Challenge Grants, the initiative is also supporting innovation in the school meals market by increasing collaboration between schools, food producers and suppliers, and other partners.
Food Industry is Answering the Call to Produce Nutritious School Foods
More Support from a School Nutrition Professional
By law, USDA is required to set standards for the foods and beverages served through the school meal programs that align with the goals of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Each school develops meals that fit within these standards and reflect tastes and preferences of the students they serve.
The Department proposed updates to the standards in February 2023 and received tremendous feedback during the 90-day public comment period that resulted in more than 136,000 total public comments. These comments were considered in the development of the finalized nutrition standards. Leading up to the proposed standards, USDA held more than 50 listening sessions with state agencies, school districts, advocacy organizations, tribal stakeholders, professional associations, food manufacturers and other federal agencies.
The Biden-Harris Administration and USDA are dedicated to supporting the school nutrition programs. While schools bounced back from the pandemic, the Department provided them more purchasing power to buy American foods and opportunities for enhanced grant programs for updating equipment, product innovation, staff training and farm to school efforts that serve the needs of their local school districts.
To learn about more ways USDA is investing in school meal programs, see the Support for Schools webpage.
USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe and healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate-smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean-energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov.
This rulemaking finalizes long-term school nutrition requirements based on the goals of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025, robust stakeholder input, and lessons learned from prior rulemakings.
The final rule - Child Nutrition Programs: Revisions to Meal Patterns Consistent with the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans - is the next step in an ongoing effort toward healthier school meals that USDA and the broader school meals community have been partnering on for well over a decade. This table is a reference tool for stakeholders to visualize the proposed implementation timeline.
Updated School Meal Standards: working towards a common goal of healthy children and helping them reach their full potential.
School meals will continue to include fruits and vegetables, emphasize whole grains, and give kids the right balance of nutrients for healthy, tasty meals. For the first time, schools will focus on products with less added sugar, especially in school breakfast.
School nutrition professionals continue to make school meals the healthiest meals children eat in a day! To take school meals to the next level, USDA is updating the school nutrition standards after considering recommendations from the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans and listening to a diverse range of voices with experience in child nutrition and health.
USDA’s commitment to strengthening the nutrition of school meals comes from a common goal we all share: to help kids lead healthy lives. The strides made in school nutrition over the past decade show that healthier school meals are possible when everyone who plays a part works together.
During their annual food show, Prince William County Schools (PWCS) showed what’s possible when school nutrition professionals, parents, students, school meals partners, and the food industry work together.
The food show, held at Charles J. Colgan High School invites students, teachers, and members of the community to come and try new menu items that PWCS is considering for future breakfast and lunch menus and provide feedback.
Students enrolled in Colgan’s Introduction to Culinary class helped prepare dishes for the show. “I think a lot of people have like this narrative that the food is not good or that it’s unhealthy, I actually think it’s actually the opposite” said one of the culinary students.
The show is a great example of how schools can generate excitement and support for healthy school meals by engaging students and community members in the meal development process.
WASHINGTON, March 4, 2024 – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that four school districts in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, and Ohio received awards for their trailblazing and innovative efforts to improve the nutritional quality of meals for their students. This announcement was made in front of nearly 850 school nutrition professionals at the School Nutrition Association Legislative Action Conference during National School Breakfast Week.
These school districts are the first winners of Healthy Meals Incentives Recognition Awards, jointly created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Action for Healthy Kids as part of USDA’s Healthy Meals Incentives Initiative, also known as HMI. These awards celebrate school districts who embrace opportunities to take their school meals to the next level. HMI is one of several ways that the Biden-Harris Administration is supporting schools to provide kids with nutritious meals that support their health and well-being.
“For many children, school meals are the healthiest, most nutritious meals in their day-to-day lives,” said Secretary Vilsack. “Investing in innovative, high quality school meals that students enjoy is one of many actions the Biden-Harris Administration is taking to improve nutrition for young Americans. At USDA, we are proud to recognize the schools that are going the extra mile in providing nutritious meals for students and helping them reach their fullest potential.”
The four awardees—Clear Lake Community School District in Iowa; Sandy Valley Local School District in Magnolia, Ohio; Petersburg School District in Alaska; and Regional School Unit 89 in Stacyville, Maine—along with 260 other small and/or rural school districts also received HMI grants last summer to enhance the nutritional quality of their school meals.
“Action for Healthy Kids would like to congratulate Clear Lake Community School District, Sandy Valley School District, Petersburg School District, and Regional School Unit 89 on the progress they’ve made in their nutrition programs this year,” said Rob Bisceglie, CEO of Action for Healthy Kids. “We applaud the staff who have worked hard to prepare fresh, appealing and delicious meals for their students.”
Clear Lake Community School District (Iowa) is recognized as a “Lunch Trailblazer” for reducing sodium in their menu items through creative strategies such as sourcing low- or no-sodium products, increasing the use of fresh local foods, and enhancing flavors with custom spice blends. “We’ve been hosting monthly taste tests for our students, which feature locally grown foods,” said Julie Udelhofen, food service director, Clear Lake Community School District. “These events are a wonderful opportunity to introduce our students to new produce items as well as show our students that their opinions matter to us.”
Sandy Valley Local School District (Ohio) is recognized as a “Lunch Trailblazer” for successfully lowering sodium in school lunches by procuring fresh and/or frozen meat and produce and selecting lower sodium foods for menu items. Their Student Council and Social Justice teams act as an advisory board by evaluating new school menu items and gathering feedback from their peers. The school district also conducts district-wide taste tests to gauge student interest in different scratch cooking options. “We are trying to incorporate more scratch cooking into [our] menus” says Tina Kindelberger, food service director at Sandy Valley Local School District. “Students have loved some of our new reduced sodium menu items, including the chicken queso chowder and buffalo chicken melt.”
Petersburg School District (Alaska) is receiving the “Innovation in the Preparation of School Meals” award for their commitment to creating scratch and semi-scratch foods that incorporate local and culturally relevant ingredients like moose meat, carrots, herring eggs, and kale. “We recently had the Petersburg Indian Association come into the culinary classes to help the students prepare moose roasts and a moose stock gravy,” says Carlee Johnson McIntosh, food service director, Petersburg School District. “Then, we had a lunch taste testing of the moose roasts and moose gravy for our students.”
Regional School Unit 89 (Maine) is receiving the “Innovation in Preparation of School Meals” award for incorporating more scratch cooking into menu items, such as homemade sub rolls using their oatmeal bread recipe, homemade croutons, pickles and roasted chickpeas. RSU 89 has also partnered with local farm Keep Ridge Farm in Benedicta to source produce like squash, onion, eggs, carrots and kale. They host monthly taste tests allowing the student body to determine what the next new menu item will be. “At our annual Thanksgiving meal, we featured Keep Ridge Farm roasted squash, local farmer Steve Crouse’s potatoes that we boiled and mashed, and turkey from USDA Foods in our homemade gravy and homemade stuffing,” said Denise Tapley Proctor, food service director at RSU 89. “The meal was well received by the community, and the reactions of our kids make us love the change in direction our school is making to more scratch cooking.”
For more information about the awardees, please visit the HMI Awardee Spotlight webpage.
These awards spotlight innovative practices, student and community engagement activities, and strategies schools have used to provide meals that are consistent with the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Schools can apply for awards in a range of categories that recognize their efforts to reduce sodium and added sugars in school meals, provide nutrition education, and involve students and families in meal planning.
The Recognition Awards application is available on the HMI website. USDA and Action for Healthy Kids recently streamlined the application process to make it easier for school nutrition professionals to apply. School districts in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, or the United States Virgin Islands are eligible to apply for the Recognition Awards if they participate in the National School Lunch Program and/or School Breakfast Program. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis over a two-year period ending June 30, 2025.
School districts and others interested in learning more can join an HMI Recognition Awards Informational Webinar on Wednesday, March 6, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. ET.
USDA established the HMI Initiative as part of its commitment to investing in the future of our nation’s children. This initiative empowers schools to continue serving delicious, healthy meals, while giving students the critical nutrition they need to grow, thrive, and reach their full potential. The HMI initiative is part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s actions toward implementing the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health.
“We’re seeing incredible efforts and innovative accomplishments by school nutrition professionals, as they provide their students with healthy, nutritious meals,” said USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service Administrator Cindy Long. “The benefits of school meals to children are undeniable, and we are committed to doing our part to support school meal programs nationwide.”
USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate-smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov.
Action for Healthy Kids is dedicated to improving children’s health and well-being by bringing together and mobilizing educators, families, and other key stakeholders to help children lead healthy lives. Through its core programming and family-school partnerships, Action for Healthy Kids has impacted more than 20 million children in 55,000 schools nationwide to address systemic challenges in underserved communities. To learn more about its growing network of volunteers and champions, visit: actionforhealthykids.org.
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USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.
A webinar for state agency and school food authority staff focused on the community eligibility provision.
The Community Eligibility Provision is a National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program meal service option that allows schools and school districts located in high poverty areas to offer breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students.