Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) is co-sponsoring a bill that supports the return of whole milk to Texas school lunchrooms.
Reintroduced by U.S. Rep. Glenn “G.T.” Thompson (R-Pennsylvania), the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act would revive the milk choice in school districts that participate in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).
“Earlier this month I cosponsored @CongressmanGT’s bill to include whole milk in the National School Lunch Program,” Granger said in a June 8 tweet. “This vital program provides lunches to more than three million Texas schoolchildren, and whole milk is a key source of nine important nutrients for growing kids.”
The bill states that “lunches served by schools participating in the school lunch program under this chapter shall offer students a variety of fluid milk; may offer students flavored and unflavored whole, reduced-fat, low-fat and fat-free fluid milk and lactose-free fluid milk; and shall provide a substitute for fluid milk for students whose disability restricts their diet, on receipt of a written statement from a licensed physician that identifies the disability that restricts the student’s diet and that specifies the substitute for fluid milk.”
Currently, schools in the NSLP program are only given the milk option of skim or 1% after the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was passed in 2010 that required schools to follow the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
“Michelle Obama gets a lot of blame, but she had nothing to do with taking whole milk out of schools,” Thompson said. “That was Congress.”
His website also states that the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services make revisions to the guidelines every five years with the input of nutrition experts. Thompson opposes the idea of relying on these guidelines that don’t get voted on at the end of the day.
“They went with some recommendations of folks who were just following bad science,” Thompson said.
The federally assisted NSLP operates in public and private schools providing nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children each school day.
The NSLP was established under the National School Lunch Act, which former President Harry S. Truman signed into law in 1946.
Income-eligible students in Texas receive school lunches for free or at a reduced price, everytexan.org reported.