New School Lunches Ahead?

More than 30 million children depend on the National School Lunch Program for a free or low-cost nutritious meal. These lunches are designed to meet U.S. Department of Agriculture nutrition standards and align with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs).

But new guidelines, Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025–2030, released last month by the Department of Health and Human Services and USDA, may pose challenges to the precise work of school meal planning. Experts say that they lack clarity and make recommendations that many school cafeterias will find difficult to deliver on.

80 Years of Lunches

Established in 1946 under the National School Lunch Act, the National School Lunch Program serves free or reduced cost lunches—no more than 40 cents—to eligible children. Children qualify for meals through their families’ enrollment in federal food assistance programs, or their status as unhoused, a runaway, in foster care, or an immigrant. Students may also qualify based on household income and family size.

Schools that participate in the program must comply with federal nutrition standards to receive reimbursement for meals. Some items currently served in school lunches include fish tacos, vegetarian chili baked potato, carrot sticks, roasted ranch broccoli, whole grain rolls, and choice of milk.

New Guidelines’ Lack of Clarity

Julia Wolfson, PhD ’16, MPP, an associate professor in International Health, notes that the new DGAs could present challenges for large-scale federal food programs like the National School Lunch Program and other food programs for children, adults, and seniors. They are “much shorter and less detailed than prior versions, and they are also contradictory and inconsistent,” Wolfson says.

The new dietary guidelines comprise 10 pages and make recommendations in broad terms with few details. For example, a recommendation to replace highly processed foods with “nutrient-dense food and home-prepared meals,” includes no specifics on food types or meals. There’s a suggestion to “eat a variety of colorful, nutrient-dense vegetables and fruits,” yet no examples. The 2020–2025 guidelines, on the other hand, number 142 pages and break down calorie needs across the lifespan, set out measured food portions, and give examples of nutrient-dense and non-nutrient dense foods. USDA school meal “patterns,” aligned with the DGAs, are grouped in categories like dark green vegetables; red and orange vegetables; and beans, peas, and lentils; and include minimum and maximum calories by grade level.

“The lack of specificity could be confusing and have implications for various [federal] programs that are supposed to comply with the dietary guidelines,” says Wolfson.

The Challenges of Reality

While nutrition experts favor the guidelines’ advice to avoid ultra-processed foods and added sugars in favor of whole foods, they note that implementing these directives could be problematic for schools, which often serve processed foods such as pre-made and portioned items like pizza, applesauce, and granola bars, out of convenience and to work within tight budgets. Also popular on school menus are flavored milk options and flavored yogurts, which include added sugars. (Recent Trump administration legislation allows schools to add whole milk to milk offerings, previously limited to low-fat and nonfat milk.)

The guidelines advise that one meal should contain no more than 10 grams of added sugars and recommend no added sugars for children ages 5–10.

“For school meal programs that could be a real challenge,” Wolfson says.

There’s also possible confusion around the guidelines’ advice to increase protein intake, prioritizing animal protein, with an emphasis on red meat and full-fat dairy products, while continuing the previous guidelines’ recommendation that daily intake of saturated fats should not exceed 10%.

“Eating three full-fat servings of dairy per day—just that on its own without the meat, you’re going to be hard-pressed to really meet that [10%] limit,” says Patti Truant Anderson, PhD ’14, MPH ’09, an assistant practice professor in Environmental Health and Engineering.

Needed: More Lunch Money

Translating the new guidelines to school meals could take a while. Schools are still implementing changes included in the 2020–2025 DGAs, following a two-year phase-in period (Fall 2025–Fall 2027). It’s unclear how and when the new guidelines will be implemented in schools, Anderson says.

In the meantime, the School Nutrition Association said in a statement about the new DGAs that improvements need to happen at the school cafeteria level prior to menu changes.

The association referenced an SNA survey in which school meal program directors expressed a need for funding to “further expand scratch cooking and reduce reliance on ultra-processed foods.” The directors also cited a need for more staff, culinary training, and equipment.

Anderson says that some organizations are working with schools to help them incorporate more scratch cooking and whole foods in school meals. The Chef Ann Foundation’s Get Schools Cooking initiative, for example, partners with school districts to develop a plan to increase scratch cooking over a three-year period. The organization’s other programs include donating salad bars to schools and offering online classes in healthy and unhealthy foods, and recipes and menu development.

Wolfson says that professional associations in the nutrition and health arena may develop their own dietary guidelines, following the lead of medical groups that issued vaccine schedules after Health and Human Services’ revisions last month to vaccine protocols.

“But that just adds to the noise and the confusion and the conflicting messages,” says Wolfson, “and I anticipate similar things will happen here.”