Whole and 2% milk are returning to school cafeterias nationwide and will be joined by nondairy options. The change is a result of legislation passed this month by Congress and expected to be signed by President Trump. Nutrition experts including Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Erica Kenney commented in a Dec. 17 STAT article about the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act’s implications.
The bill reverses Obama-era restrictions on higher-fat milk in schools. It also allows schools to offer nondairy alternatives that are nutritionally equivalent to milk.
Kenny, associate professor of public health nutrition, said she’s glad that kids will have access to nondairy options to accommodate lactose intolerance, veganism, and personal preference. However, the reintroduction of higher-fat milks may be part of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement’s strategy to rehabilitate the nutritional reputation of saturated fat—which Kenney and other experts say is cause for concern.
“What’s alarming to me isn’t the milk necessarily,” she told STAT, but the potential message from the federal government that “we don’t need to worry so much about saturated fat content anymore. I’m a little alarmed about what might be coming next.”
