{"id":584409,"date":"2026-04-14T21:40:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T21:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/584409\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T21:40:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T21:40:15","slug":"maha-and-school-nutrition-groups-urge-usda-to-promote-fiber-in-school-nutrition-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/584409\/","title":{"rendered":"MAHA and school nutrition groups urge USDA to promote fiber in school nutrition standards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for Chalkbeat\u2019s free weekly newsletter<\/a> to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration loves red meat, and could soon change what students eat in schools. But an unlikely collection of groups that includes key constituents for the president agree on one message: Don\u2019t put kids on the carnivore diet.<\/p>\n

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a big, vocal believer in the power of beef, lamb, pork, and similar foods. And red meat has a starring role in a new food pyramid unveiled by the federal government<\/a> in January that says Americans should prioritize foods rich in protein.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is expected to eventually align school meal nutrition standards<\/a> to that new food pyramid. The agency\u2019s proposal isn\u2019t out yet. But those who believe fiber and not protein is a bigger priority \u2014 for Americans in general and kids in particular \u2014 are already expressing anxiety about it. <\/p>\n

In March, a group of over 900 school districts and school nutrition professionals signed a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins urging her department to maintain existing meat requirements<\/a>. They warned that increasing that requirement might crowd out fiber-rich foods, which the group wrote is \u201cunder-consumed\u201d by students.<\/p>\n

That argument from the nutrition professionals has backing from groups supportive of the Make America Healthy Again \u2014 or MAHA \u2014 movement. These groups generally believe that better nutrition will help fight chronic illness<\/a> and have backed aspects of the president\u2019s agenda. A coalition of these organizations, including Moms Across America, also urged the USDA to maintain the previous meat requirement<\/a>, with fiber the \u201cmore urgent public health priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National School Lunch Program is a consistent source of nutrition for children from low-income families. And the federally subsidized program operates on a large scale: It serves about 4.8 billion meals annually<\/a>, according to a School Nutrition Association analysis of recent federal data. But it\u2019s also run by the Agriculture Department, an agency whose primary stakeholders are food producers. That means over the decades, school lunch nutrition standards have been in constant flux and reflected contemporary health trends. <\/p>\n

Standards have been tweaked, overhauled and recalibrated over many administrations, from the infamous \u201cpizza as a vegetable\u201d controversy<\/a> that pitted Congress against the Obama administration\u2019s quest for healthier lunches to a more recent decree from the Biden administration for schools to gradually scale back<\/a> added sugar. A week after his administration unveiled the new food pyramid, President Donald Trump signed a law reversing an Obama-era rule that outlawed whole milk<\/a> in school lunches.<\/p>\n

The current scramble for supremacy between fiber and protein is on display on grocery shelves, which feature fiber-rich probiotic sodas and Pop Tarts touting added protein. Nutrition experts say most kids are getting adequate levels of protein. Fiber is \u201cthe nutrient that tends to get neglected,\u201d said Annette Schille, a clinical nutrition specialist at Boston Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cKids having access to school meals, it can be really one of the most powerful tools that we have to improve children\u2019s nutrition,\u201d Schille said.<\/p>\n

Fiber in the spotlight in school lunch debate<\/p>\n

Current federal school meal standards regulate added sugar, fat, sodium and calories<\/a>, but don\u2019t set a specific fiber requirement. They do require lunches to include certain amounts of fruits and vegetables, including fiber-rich beans, peas and lentils. But generally, it can be difficult to get kids to go for those options, and upping a meat requirement could risk \u201ccrowding out\u201d the fiber that does make it onto the plate, the group of school nutrition professionals argued.<\/p>\n

Those who oversee school nutrition on a daily basis are under a lot of pressure, those experts say, to balance the requirements of making nutritionally balanced meals with the reality that students usually have a short window of time to eat lunch. And cafeterias are on a tight budget of roughly $4.60 a meal<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Liz Campbell, vice president of government affairs and media relations for the School Nutrition Association, said that economic realities look different from cafeteria to cafeteria. Some schools in North Dakota are running programs without adequate resources like functioning kitchens, while the Austin Independent School District in Texas \u2014 Kennedy Jr. recently visited<\/a> to scope out school meals \u2014 has a dietitian on staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to think about standards that are operationally feasible for everyone and so that folks can be financially solvent,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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But food quality should be prioritized even under economic pressure, said Carrie Balkcom, executive director of the American Grassfed Association, a farm and ranching advocacy organization and one of the organizations that signed the letter from the MAHA-aligned coalition. <\/p>\n

The letter argues that while meat requirements don\u2019t need to go up, existing protein sources used in schools are often highly processed.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not enough incentive for local, grassfed meat products to make it to a student\u2019s lunch tray, Balkcom said. The administration last year cut several grant programs supporting local farm-to-school efforts<\/a>. But Balkcom would like to see more collaboration. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are producers out there who are ready, willing and able to work with the school lunch program,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Michelle Saletan was a pastry chef in Charleston, South Carolina, before she moved over to managing school cafeterias. Meeting USDA requirements felt like a real challenge after working in the private sector for so long.<\/p>\n

School kitchens have to be creative to include adequate nutrient levels in lunches that will appeal to children. For example, lunch periods tend to be short, so while oranges could be a source of fiber, students probably aren\u2019t going to spend lunch peeling one.<\/p>\n

Saletan now works as institutional support manager with Balanced.org<\/a>, a nonprofit based in Kansas City that works with schools to help improve nutrition content \u2014 and especially fiber content \u2014 in their meals. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s disappointing to her that existing federal school lunch standards don\u2019t include a fiber requirement. And the process for the USDA to finalize new standards, which includes taking public comment on proposed new federal rules, will likely take several months. <\/p>\n

But schools don\u2019t have to wait for them to incorporate more fiber, Saletan said. They also don\u2019t have to wait for a budget increase, she said: It\u2019s a misconception that plant proteins like black-bean burgers or plant-based nuggets are more expensive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about how to serve them,\u201d she said. \u201cTake your existing spaghetti sauce and just put lentils in. Even if you\u2019re doing 50% beef and 50% lentils, you\u2019re increasing the fiber naturally, increasing the protein, and you\u2019re cutting your cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for Chalkbeat\u2019s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":584410,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[12554,36528,3832,88093,97,29590,269,177447,14488,36532,255881],"class_list":["post-584409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-class","tag-classroom","tag-colorado","tag-first-day-of-school","tag-health","tag-lunch","tag-nutrition","tag-preschool","tag-students","tag-teacher","tag-the-family-center-la-familia-in-fort-collins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=584409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/584410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}