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The tiny, half-pint cartons of milk served with millions of school lunches nationwide may soon be scarce in some cafeterias, leaving districts across the country scrambling to find alternatives. The problem is not a shortage of milk itself, but the cardboard cartons used to package and serve it, according to dairy industry suppliers and state officials. Pactiv Evergreen of Lake Forest, Illinois, which bills itself as “the leading manufacturer of fresh food and beverage packaging in North America” acknowledged in a statement Friday that it “continues to face significantly higher than projected demand” for its milk cartons.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, federal policymakers acted quickly and decisively to make school meals available to all children at no charge. This policy remained in effect for two and a half years. It was a game-changer. Across the country, school nutrition staff reported numerous benefits in the Food Research & Action Center’s (FRAC) Large School District Report, including removing the stigma from program participation and eliminating school meal debt to the benefit of both families and school districts. The policy also helped address household food insecurity, which rose significantly due to COVID-19 and allowed an additional...

Twenty-eight civil rights and health care groups announced Tuesday they have requested that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) address “dietary racism” in national school lunch programs, raising concerns to the federal agency about forcing millions of minority children to drink cow’s milk without allowing them a healthier alternative. In a letter to the USDA’s Equity Commission, the groups said the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) only incentivizes dairy milk, a policy they called “inherently inequitable and socially unjust” because children of color are more likely to be lactose intolerant — meaning they cannot fully digest sugars in dairy and...

The Biden administration is requiring schools to comply with its LGBT policies or lose billions in federal funding for school lunches. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service announced in May it will prevent low-income students from participating in its National School Lunch Program if their public school does not adopt the administration's interpretation of Title IX, which holds that the federal civil rights law's provision against discrimination based on sex includes designations of sexual orientation and gender identity. The move was originally reported by The Center Square. Critics of the administration's decision said it could unnecessarily harm...

K-12 schools must allow boys into girls’ private areas to obtain federal funds for lunches, breakfasts, and snacks, the Biden administration announced this month. A U.S. Department of Education spokesman told The Federalist the Biden administration’s press releases from several agencies announcing this policy will be followed by formal rulemaking in June. “It seems to be playing politics with feeding poor kids, which is really unfortunate,” John Elcesser, executive director of the Indiana Non-Public Education Association, said via phone amid weeks of attempting to sort out these new demands with government officials on behalf of private schools in his state....

Is it any wonder school officials view themselves as the leading authorities on children?Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial win in Virginia sent a clear message to government bureaucrats: treat parents with more respect. Parents are paramount to their kids’ welfare and education, and they have a right to be angry when treated otherwise. Yet parents should also reflect on how we got here and consider how they share at least some of the blame. For decades, public schools have encroached on some basic parental responsibilities — from feeding kids to health care to helping with homework. Is it any wonder school officials...

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed a new state law Thursday that focuses on students' access to school meals, with provisions around free breakfast and lunch as well as unpaid meal debt. The new law also takes aim at a practice known as "lunch shaming," prohibiting schools from publicly identifying or taking punitive action against students who have unresolved debt for school meals. "The new law is both timely and critical because it boosts federal nutrition dollars to schools across Massachusetts, and keeps children out of what should be an 'adult only' conversation on school meal debt," said Patricia Baker, a...

... By my calculation, roughly 20 million eligible children, mostly from middle- and upper-middle-class families, continue to opt out of the national program by bringing lunch or by buying special à la carte food items not covered by the program. As an individual family decision, packing lunches might seem like the best option, especially for children with special dietary needs. But when millions of families do so, their actions reduce the political will and financial resources necessary to make public school lunches better for everyone. The Trump administration isn’t much help. According to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, providing schools with...

A Trump administration “loophole” in school lunch rules will allow for certain types of pasta to qualify as vegetables as well as for students to get more burgers and fries. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s proposals will continue to erode Michelle Obama’s legacy by easing restrictions on the types and quantities on fruit and vegetables put on the table. “Pasta made of vegetable flour(s) may credit as a vegetable, even if the pasta is not served with another recognizable vegetable,” the new guidelines say. The department said the changes will help to reduce food waste, because students were often given...

The Trump administration on Friday announced plans to roll back school lunch standards originally promoted by former first lady Michelle Obama. The new standards will allow schools more flexibility "because they know their children best," the Agriculture Department said in press release. “Schools and school districts continue to tell us that there is still too much food waste and that more common-sense flexibility is needed to provide students nutritious and appetizing meals. We listened and now we’re getting to work,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said. The proposed new rules build on previous steps taken by the Trump administration to roll...

On the presidential campaign trail, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been pushing for a policy that would pave the way for free meals at school for all children. His campaign promise is backed by the notion that one out of six children don’t know where their next meal is coming from. His flawed logic asserts that the federal government should make free and reduced-price lunch available to not only the one out of six who need assistance, but to the five out of six children who are already adequately fed. ... There are more than seven major federal food programs...

A teenage student put her Minnesota High School on blast in a viral Facebook post showing her abysmal school lunch, outraging fellow students and parents alike. Maryn Holler, a student at Apollo High School in St. Cloud, shared photos of her disheartening meal in a September 13 post that has been shared more than a 1000 times and has received more than a 1000 reacts. The meal consists of what appears to be a hot dog bun covered in cheese with a pile of carrots and a small container of apple sauce.

If fewer kids bring lunch from home, Austin ISD says it can improve the quality of ingredients it uses to prepare breakfast and lunch across the entire district. Wednesday, the district’s food truck hit the road for the first time this school year. Its first stop is McCallum High School, where students will have the option of grass-fed burgers, among other bites. The nutrition and food services department is working toward a goal of using only grass-fed beef in every school cafeteria, plus organic produce and milk. But in order to do that, it needs more students to eat the...

Is white bread about to make a comeback on school lunch menus? After complaints about taste and costs, the Trump administration rolled back a rule that required foods like pasta and bread be made with whole grains. The cafeteria directors who lobbied for the change say they just want greater flexibility to serve foods like white bread — which are more processed and have less fiber — when whole grains don’t work. In Vermont, the relaxed rule means white rice will be served with beans again. In Oregon, macaroni and cheese may return. And in South Dakota, students may notice...

Horrors! Bad food. That kids like. Including all that highly recommended carby stuff still sitting there at the bottom of the government's food pyramid. The press is yelling 'fat people' and all that, imagining that lefty-union-controlled school authorities around the country are just itching to put refined flour and white sugar in front of the young 'uns, alongside chocolate milk. Tortillas, maybe, given the high numbers of Mexican kids (but don't dare serve them to a Honduran!), yet the reality is, the Trump administration is giving school districts some school choice in how to handle the food situation for the...

For years after Michelle Obama’s ironically named Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, students at Penn-Trafford High School in Harrison City, Pennsylvania staged an accidental trash can rebellion. As in many districts, waste management companies were the only winners as students dumped lunch into the garbage. For this school year, Penn-Trafford High School instead tossed Mrs. Obama’s school lunch plan and now President Trump is doing the same on a national scale. As with any policy created by coercive utopians to control personal choices, nothing about the Obama plan made sense. Kids, parents and school districts hated it, and its...

The Trump administration is ending yet another of Michelle Obama’s hated, overly strict school lunch rules by bringing chocolate milk back to school lunch menus. The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Thursday announced a new rule set to take effect on July 1 after the period of public comment. The new rule relaxes sodium limits and Obama’s whole-grain requirements. The rule will also allow milk with one percent fat back on the menu, ABC News reported. “Schools need flexibility in menu planning so they can serve nutritious and appealing meals,” Perdue said this week. “Schools want to offer food that...

Of the 5,052,222,946 school lunches served in Fiscal Year 2016, 73.3 percent of them — the highest percentage on record — were either free or reduced price meals, according to data posted on September 8, 2017 by the Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service. Free lunches comprised two-thirds (66.6 percent) of all lunches served in that school year; and reduced-price lunches comprised 6.7 percent. Students paid full price for the remaining 26.7 percent in Fiscal 2016, the latest year for which data is available. (FY 2016 covers the 12-month period beginning in Oct. 2015 and running through Sept. 2016. It...

I know it’s FLOTUS Friday…but Deep In the Heart of Texas linked this yesterday: Michelle Obama's 'nasty, rotty' school lunch guru busted for corruption  Michelle Obama praised Binkle for his newly reformed school lunch program, which nominally imposed his rarefied chef tastes of quinoa, pad thai, black bean burgers, and other chi-chi nouvelle cuisine as a substitute for tacos, burgers, and corn dogs favored by children across the vast multi-ethnic school district.  In reality, they were overcharging, overbilling, and under-delivering, with the food turning out to be basically slop.  It probably didn't help that it was public employee unions executing...

Los Angeles, CA – David Binkle is a chef and one of the architects behind Michelle Obama’s inedible lunches. He was recently arrested for defrauding the school lunch program and is facing up to 13 years in prison if convicted. L.A. Times reports: David Binkle was hailed as a pioneer among school nutrition advocates for accomplishing a near-herculean task – using produce and meats provided by local growers to greatly reduce the number of fatty meals served in the nation’s second-largest school district. The initiatives won the district numerous awards, drew praise from then-First Lady Michelle Obama as she led...