Why Kids Can’t Get Whole Milk—but Can Get Sugar for Breakfast

A battle over bringing whole milk back to cafeterias highlights the real food problem facing America’s next generation.

Cafeteria lunches are decided by factors ranging from budgets to child preferences. Dragan Mujan/Shutterstock

Lawmakers are pushing to bring whole milk back to school cafeterias after it was banned in 2012. It’s a battle years in the making, but milk may be the wrong fight.

Children face a deeper problem: a school food system shaped less by health than by cost, convenience, and supply chains. While Congress argues over fat percentages, cafeterias remain dominated by processed, prepackaged meals that meet regulations but fail to meet nutritional ideals.

Kids are having their taste buds educated by cheap, easy processed foods that are hard to resist, even as rates of chronic diseases once mainly observed in the elderly balloon among children.

The milk debate might be overblown, but it reveals the fault lines in a nutritional battleground that may finally be making some progress in the right direction.

And that’s important.

Nearly one in five American children are obese. More than 40 percent live with at least one chronic illness. An estimated 20 million could be diagnosed with a mental health disorder. The health of our children and our nation’s future is in crisis.

When Milk Policy Reveals a Bigger Problem

The “Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act,” led by Sens. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.), would allow schools to serve whole and reduced-fat milk—both flavored and unflavored—for the first time since federal nutrition rules banned them in 2012.

“Whole milk is one of the most nutritious drinks known to mankind,” Marshall, a physician and former dairy farmer, told The Epoch Times.

On paper, the change may seem marginal. Whole milk contains about 3.25 percent milk fat, compared with the zero percent to 1 percent in current school-approved options. But under federal meal standards, that margin has been enough to keep it off lunch trays.

The original restrictions were rooted in decades-old dietary guidance focused on lowering saturated fat. Although it was slightly relaxed in 2017 to allow some flavored 1 percent milk, the core ban on whole and 2 percent milk stayed in place.

The ban reflected a larger dietary fissure that saw food makers limit fat while increasing added sugars. While fat reduction goals were reached, Americans and their children became fatter.

The Chocolate Milk Exception

Few foods illustrate the contradictions in school nutrition policy better than chocolate milk. Whole and 2 percent milk were banned for fat content, yet sugary skim and low-fat chocolate milk remain widely available.

Christopher Gardner, a professor of medicine at Stanford and former member of the federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, said that dynamic was “really backwards.”

“I would be in support of banning any kind of chocolate milk and allowing whole milk to be added back,” he told The Epoch Times in an email, although he had other reservations.

According to Marshall, the logic defies common sense.

“It’s hypocrisy,” he said. “It’s not well thought through.”

A 2021 study in Nutrients found that flavored skim milk alone accounted for nearly half of all added sugars in school lunches and almost a third in school breakfasts. When given the choice, three out of four students consistently choose it over plain milk.

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposed banning flavored milk in elementary schools but reversed course after more than 136,000 public comments and industry pushback.

For many students, the choice between sweetened milk and watery skim or 1 percent wasn’t much of a choice at all. For those who can’t—or don’t—consume dairy, there often isn’t any option. Schools currently require a doctor’s note to offer reimbursable plant-based milks such as soy and oat.

Proposed legislation, including a provision in Marshall’s bill, would change that by allowing a parent’s note instead. It’s a small administrative fix but reflects a larger shift toward a broadened milk policy.

Offering choices resonates with school nutrition director Krista Byler, who remembered the fallout when whole milk was first removed from her district’s menus in 2012.

“Milk was leaking all over the place. We had to give students buckets to pour out what they weren’t drinking,” she told The Epoch Times. “When I saw it for the first time, I felt sick. And this was happening while dairy farms all around us were shutting down.”

Later, when her district was allowed to pilot whole and 2 percent milk again, she saw the change firsthand: Milk consumption rose by 50 percent, and waste dropped by 95 percent.

“That’s what happens when kids are given choices they actually want,” she said.

Her experience echoes a national pattern. A 2021 study estimated that between 27 percent and 53 percent of food served in U.S. school cafeterias ends up in the trash, including 45 million gallons of milk each year, enough to fill 68 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

A Nutrition Debate or Distraction?

The chocolate milk paradox reflects a broader nutrition debate that began in the 1970s and ’80s, when fat was vilified and manufacturers compensated by adding sugar to processed foods to make them more appealing. Fat went down, sugar went up, and Americans stayed in caloric overload, even as ultra-processed, ready-to-eat foods became the norm.

That legacy lingers. The debate over milk reflects how slowly nutrition policy adjusts to new science, and how easily it fixates on single ingredients or items over broader dietary patterns.

For decades, federal guidelines pushed low-fat milk to reduce saturated fat and protect heart health. However, newer research has questioned that logic and suggests that whole milk may not raise harmful cholesterol levels and might even support heart health. Instead, the authors urged a shift in focus from isolated nutrients such as saturated fat to the overall quality of children’s diets.

“The body of credible nutrition science has evolved and no longer supports a policy of allowing only fat-free and low-fat milk in schools,” Keith Ayoob, a pediatric nutrition specialist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told Congress this spring. “Nutrition is not a static science. It is dynamic. It should be.”

He and others point to the “dairy matrix”—the natural structure of proteins and fats in milk and yogurt—as a reason dairy fat may behave differently in the body than other sources of saturated fat.

Not everyone agrees that the evidence is strong enough to change course. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association (AHA) still recommend low-fat options.

“The research has not reached the level of confidence that would justify changing the current recommendations,” Dr. Mark Corkins, a pediatric gastroenterologist, wrote to The Epoch Times.

the AHA told The Epoch Times in an email that “allowing whole milk in school meals would be inconsistent with science-based standards and would undermine the progress made in improving the nutritional quality of school meals.”

Gardner takes a middle ground.

“Dairy is one of the main contributors to saturated fat,” he said. “But actually, whole milk is not a major contributor.”

If the choice is between sugary flavored milk and whole milk, he said he’d choose the latter.

He points to other dairy-based foods as larger contributors to saturated fat in children’s diets.

“At the same time, I’d like to see the amount of cheese in school limited—especially in pizza and burritos—and the amount of ice cream limited,” Gardner said.

Ice cream isn’t part of reimbursable meals but is often sold à la carte, he noted.

Is Milk the Right Nutritional Anchor?

Milk has long been a staple in school nutrition, offering protein, calcium, and other key nutrients in a single serving. That nutritional density helped cement its status on the tray.

It’s also filling.

“The protein content helps produce some satiety,” Corkins said. “That helps prevent overeating.”

However, the idea that milk is essential to every child’s diet is beginning to fade.

“For many years, milk was considered a basic ingredient,” Corkins said. “Now this is not an accepted fact, and parents regularly give their children alternative beverages.”

Some experts argue that low-fat milk, once promoted for weight control, may have negative effects. In a 2013 JAMA Pediatrics editorial, Drs. David Ludwig and Walter Willett warned that it’s less filling and may lead kids to compensate with sugary or starchy snacks.

“Rather than weight loss, this substitution of refined starch and sugar for fat might actually cause weight gain,” they wrote.

They also noted that key vitamins in milk, such as A and D, are fat-soluble and may be less absorbable in reduced-fat versions.

Others question whether schools rely too heavily on milk to deliver those nutrients in the first place.

“There are many sources of calcium in the diet, including dark green leafy veggies, tofu, beans, and fortified plant milks,” Gardner said.

As for vitamin D, he said, children should be “getting a healthy dose of sunshine most days of the year.”

Gardner said the real issue is how much weight milk carries in the broader conversation.

“I’d say restricting soda consumption would be more important than making whole milk available,” he said.

The Rest of the Tray

Walk through a typical school cafeteria and you’ll likely see trays filled with prepackaged chicken nuggets, reheated pizza, and flavored yogurts. These meals meet federal nutrition standards not because they’re fresh, but because they hit targets for calories, fat, and sodium.

A 2025 survey by Nourish Lab found that only 3 percent of schools prepare meals from scratch or minimally processed ingredients. Nearly 80 percent rely on USDA-classified “quick-preparation” foods.

To qualify for reimbursement, meals must follow federal rules, providing fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and milk, while staying under calorie and sodium caps. However, meeting the numbers doesn’t guarantee meaningful nourishment. Ultra-processed foods can check the boxes while remaining high in additives and low in quality.

Kids don’t just eat these foods; they also learn to crave them. Research shows that toddlers who eat more ultra-processed foods tend to carry those habits into childhood. Designed to be saltier, sweeter, and richer, these hyper-palatable products train our tastebuds to crave more and make whole foods seem bland by comparison.

That makes school choices harder. Even plain whole milk may lose out next to chocolate milk. While schools debate which milk to serve, many children are already wired for ultra-processed options.

“Sixty to 70 percent of our calories now come from packaged food,” he said. “It’s not a good thing, especially in school lunches.”

The Cost of Convenience

Part of the reason processed foods dominate school lunches—and American pantries—is cost and convenience.

Nutrition directors are expected to feed students on razor-thin budgets. The federal reimbursement—about $4.50 per meal—must cover food, labor, equipment, and overhead. Nearly half of schools say that’s not enough to serve healthy meals.

It’s cheaper to heat frozen pizza than to prepare a fresh stir-fry. And once processed foods are built into school procurement systems, sourced from national vendors, packaged to USDA specs, and delivered on tight schedules, they’re hard to replace.

Just as not every family has a quality grocery store nearby or a parent with extra time to cook, not every school has the staff or kitchen to cook from scratch. Not every supplier offers whole or reduced-fat milk. Even a two-cent increase per milk carton can stretch a district’s budget, Byler told The Epoch Times.

However, some argue the issue isn’t funding—it’s priorities.

“The country is spending $11 billion a year on SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] for sugary sodas,” Marshall said. “What if we used that money for healthy food choices instead?”

In that way, schools operate much like households, choosing what’s manageable now, even if the long-term costs to health and learning are harder to see. Advocates say the return on investment is there, but the system doesn’t always allow schools to think that far ahead.

A Moment for More Than Milk

With new federal dietary guidelines set to be released later this year and political winds shifting the national conversation, the timing may be right for something more than a milk fight.

“Why are we messing around here?” Byler said. “This is our future that we’re feeding.”