Proposed Revision National School Lunch nutrition requirements

USDA proposes revised National School Lunch nutrition requirements

USDA announced it will publish in Thursday’s Federal Register a proposed rule to update the nutrition standards for meals served through the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs.

The proposed rule would require schools to offer more fruits, vegetables and whole grains; offer only fat-free or low-fat fluid milk; reduce the sodium content of school meals substantially over time; control saturated fat and calorie levels; and minimize trans fat.

For school lunch, the proposed rules would change the minimum amount of meat/meat alternate to a 1.6 ounce to 2.4 ounce daily average over five days from the current 1.5 ounce to 3 ounce daily average over five days.

Processed meats

“The use of processed meats would be discouraged because those available at this time are usually high in sodium,” the proposed rule stated, adding, “If offered, processed meats would have to be low in fat.” The rule said schools would have to offer lean meats/meat alternates.

Tofu

The rule is not proposing to credit commercially prepared tofu as an allowable meat alternate at this time. However, the rule said USDA is interested in receiving comments from the child nutrition community proposing a methodology that could be used for crediting commercially prepared tofu.

The proposed changes are based on recommendations from the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine in the report “School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children.”

USDA said the new rules would raise standards for the first time in 15 years and help improve the health and nutrition of participating children.

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