President Donald Trump signed a law Wednesday that overturns Obama-era limits on higher-fat milk options in school lunches, allowing participating schools to serve whole and 2% milk as part of the meals they provide. Whole milk is set to return to school cafeterias nationwide after the bill’s passage, and officials said the change could begin as soon as this fall.
The bill Trump signed is the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which cleared Congress in the fall. It allows schools in the National School Lunch Program to offer whole and 2% milk in addition to skim and low-fat products that have been required since 2012.
Trump signed the legislation at a White House signing ceremony with lawmakers, dairy farmers and their children, and he said, “Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, whole milk is a great thing.” The backdrop to the event included a recent Agriculture Department social media post showing Trump with a glass of milk and a “milk mustache” that declared, “Drink Whole Milk.”
The new law also expands options for students who do not drink conventional milk. It permits schools to serve nondairy milk that meets the nutritional standards of milk, and it requires schools to offer a nondairy milk alternative when children provide a note from their parents describing a dietary restriction, not just from doctors.
For schools, implementation may take time even after the law takes effect. The change could take hold as soon as this fall, school nutrition and dairy industry officials said, but some districts may need longer to gauge demand for full-fat dairy and adjust supply chains.
The legislation reverses parts of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act championed by former first lady Michelle Obama. Enacted more than a dozen years ago, the earlier law aimed to slow obesity and boost health by cutting children’s consumption of saturated fat and calories in higher-fat milk.
The updated rules will affect meals served to about 30 million students enrolled in the National School Lunch Program. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described the law as “a long-overdue correction to school nutrition policy,” while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said it fixed Michelle Obama’s “short-sighted campaign to ditch whole milk.”
Under the new requirements, schools must provide students with a range of fluid milk options that can include flavored and unflavored organic or conventional whole milk, 2%, 1% and lactose-free milk, alongside non-dairy options that meet nutritional standards. The most recent dietary guidance calls for “full-fat dairy with no added sugars,” which could preclude chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milks that were previously allowed under an update to school meal standards. Agriculture officials will have to translate the dietary recommendation into specific school requirements to eliminate flavored milks.
The law also exempts milk fat from federal requirements that average saturated fats make up less than 10% of calories in school meals. Supporters—including nutrition experts, lawmakers and the dairy industry—have argued that whole milk is nutritious and has been unfairly vilified, and they have cited studies suggesting children who drink whole milk are less likely to develop obesity than those who drink lower-fat options.
Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian of Tufts University said there is “no meaningful benefit” in choosing low-fat over high-fat dairy. In an interview, he said saturated fatty acids in dairy have a different composition than other fats, along with different beneficial compounds that could offset theoretical harms, adding, “Saturated fat in dairy has not been linked to any adverse health outcomes.”
Opponents point to evidence that federal nutrition-program changes adopted after the Obama-era law slowed the rise in obesity among U.S. children, including teenagers. Other nutrition experts have pointed to newer research that suggests children who drink whole milk could be less likely to be overweight or to develop obesity than those who drink lower-fat milk.
A 2020 review of 28 studies suggested the risk was 40% less for children who drank whole milk, but the authors said they could not determine whether milk consumption itself was the reason.