Feds propose rules to limit sugar in school meals

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (FOX 2) - U.S. agriculture officials on Friday proposed new nutrition standards for school meals, including the first limits on added sugars, with a focus on sweetened foods such as cereals, yogurt, flavored milk and breakfast pastries.

The plan announced by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also seeks to significantly decrease sodium in the meals served to the nation’s schoolkids by 2029, while making the rules for foods made with whole grains more flexible.

The goal is to improve nutrition and align with U.S. dietary guidelines in the program that serves breakfast to more than 15 million children and lunch to nearly 30 million children every day, Vilsack said.

"School meals happen to be the meals with the highest nutritional value of any meal that children can get outside the home," Vilsack said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Laura Boring, a certified holistic nutritionist in Michigan, says quality school meals are extremely important.

"We're creating kids that are very prone to diabetes to learning disabilities, ADHD," Boring said. "The nutritional value that they're going to get from that one meal can make a whole difference for the remaining of their day."

According to No Kid Hungry, it's estimated that roughly 9 million kids live in food insecure homes, meaning they might get only one or two meals a day - if that. One of those could be a meal at school, making it all the more important for a school lunch to remove those sugars.

"A nutritionally balanced meal would be smaller amount of processed sugars, or sugars, in general, a good amount of protein for the individual, a healthy fat and healthy carbs, making sure that the portion is there on their dish showing our kids what those portions look like," Boring said. "My own kids will tell me I had pineapple or orange slices but they're in those little containers with us. so much sugar in them in there in syrup, I would prefer to see just natural, you know, normal regular fruit out there."

The first limits on added sugars would be required in the 2025-2026 school year, starting with high-sugar foods such as sweetened cereals, yogurts and flavored milks.

Boring explains how overdoing it on sugar can actually slow kids down.

"Well, we're spiking our glycemic level to begin with, so the amount of energy goes really, really high up to begin with, but it also drops significantly fast. So it's in that drop that that's when we're, you know, lacking that energy," she said.

Shiriki Kumanyika, a community health expert at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health said if they’re done right some of the changes will be hard for kids to notice:

"They're less likely to see really sweet pastries for school breakfast and things like that. But there may be some changes that are that could be considered silent if it's done right. That they'll see things that they like to eat. But those foods will be healthier. And that's that that's, I think, part of the goal."

For more information on the proposed changes, check out the USDA's website here.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.