New federal rules for school meals ban flavored milks containing fat.
All four Idaho members of Congress signed a letter of objection Wednesday to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
“We do not want federal regulations in Idaho that limit our milk and dairy consumption in schools,” wrote Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, and Reps. Mike Simpson and Raul Labrador.
Idaho is the third-largest producer of dairy products in the United States, and the executive director of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association said he appreciates the delegation’s effort. The national dairy industry also is protesting.
The U.S. Department of Education released new rules last month, saying they would result in millions of healthier school meals and fewer obese children. The standards double the amounts of fruits and vegetables in lunches, increase offerings of grain and set maximum amounts for calories.
The government requires schools to offer milk with each school lunch and breakfast, but the new rules ban flavored milk unless it is fat-free and state that plain milk must be either low-fat or fat-free.
The Idaho lawmakers’ letter argues that allowing low-fat flavored milk is consistent with government dietary guidelines and recommendations of the nonprofit Institute of Medicine.
“The point is that the federal government, the Department of Agriculture, should not be issuing essentially these rigid mandates that are not necessarily founded in the proper dietary science,” Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo said in an interview. “People can argue one way or the other on it, but we should let our local school districts and others involved in the school food program be the ones who make the decisions.”
USDA spokesman Aaron Lavallee responded that the “historic reforms” are consistent with Institute of Medicine recommendations by giving children the crucial nutrients of dairy while limiting sugars, fat and calories.
Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C., said there’s contention over whether flavored milk should be allowed at all.
“If it’s going to be chocolate milk or flavored milk, it needs to be limited in calories, and one way to do that is to make it only fat-free milk,” she said. “So you are kind of trading off some of the fat for sugar.”
Wootan said she doubted kids would refuse to drink chocolate milk just because there’s no fat. “You could add chocolate to mud and people would eat it. I don’t think the kids care at all.”
Although Idaho children drink more weekly servings of milk at school than children in any other state, most children across the country are drinking less milk, the letter from the Idaho congressmen said. Milk is competing with a lot of other beverage choices, they wrote, with school cafeterias and vending machines often stocking beverages that don’t have milk’s nutritional value.
“Kids like, and drink, low-fat flavored milk. The recent limitation on low fat flavored milk in the … school meal rule puts milk at a considerable disadvantage relative to competing beverages in schools,” they wrote.
Sean Cockerham (202-383-6016) of McClatchy Newspapers, is the Washington correspondent for the Idaho Statesman.
