President Trump signed bipartisan legislation on Wednesday allowing school cafeterias to serve whole milk and 2 percent milk — another step toward fulfilling the administration’s promise to “end the war” on saturated fats.
The move is the latest chapter in a long debate about whether milk fat is helpful or harmful for children.
Since 2012, any school that participates in the National School Lunch Program, which offers federal funding for meals, has served only nonfat or 1 percent milk to reduce children’s risk of obesity and cardiovascular disease.
Recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, and members of his Make America Healthy Again movement have championed whole milk; new federal dietary guidelines released last week encourage Americans to drink more of it.
Representatives for the dairy industry, who lobbied for the change, and the legislators who voted for it say that there’s no evidence that whole milk is harmful to children’s health. Some children may prefer higher fat milk, so allowing it to be served in schools could encourage them to drink more of it — increasing children’s consumption of the nutrients it provides.
But it’s not clear if bringing whole milk back to schools will improve children’s health, nutrition experts said.
What is the debate around milk?
There’s no question that milk provides essential nutrients, and for that reason health organizations have recommended that children aged 5 to 8 consume up to 2.5 cups of milk per day, and those aged 9 and up consume up to three cups per day.
But health experts and legislators have disagreed about which types to promote.
Since 1990, federal dietary guidelines have suggested that children aged 2 and up should consume skim or low-fat milk to limit their consumption of saturated fats. Several health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association, have supported that advice.
Megan Lott, a registered dietitian at Duke University and the deputy director for Healthy Eating Research, an organization that helped develop guidelines from health organizations on what school-aged children should drink, said that lower-fat options contain the same amount of essential nutrients — like protein, calcium, potassium and vitamin D — as higher-fat milks, but with fewer calories and less saturated fat.
Consuming too much saturated fat can raise cholesterol levels and, over time, increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, research suggests. And consuming excess calories could contribute to weight gain in children, Ms. Lott said.
One cup of whole milk has 80 percent more calories than nonfat milk; it contains 4.5 grams of saturated fat, whereas nonfat milk contains only trace amounts.
The new change to the school lunch program stipulates that the saturated fat in milk will not count toward the current limits on the fats served in schools. That “leaves even more room for excess saturated fat,” said the Center for Science and the Public Interest, a food and health watchdog group that opposed the amendment, in a statement. Already, 75 to 85 percent of U.S. children consume more than the recommended amount of saturated fat, the organization added.
“We certainly don’t want kids to get an overwhelming amount of saturated fat,” said Dr. Steven Abrams, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, who was not involved with the new legislation. But he supports the law, he said, in part because there is not good evidence that drinking whole milk leads to obesity or worsens the health of children with a healthy weight, despite its saturated fat content.
In fact, some studies have found the opposite. In a 2020 review, researchers found that children who consumed whole milk were less likely to be overweight or obese than children who drank lower-fat options. Limited research also suggests that the type of milk children drink appears to have little effect on their blood pressure or blood cholesterol levels.
Most of the research has been observational, meaning it cannot show cause and effect, and many of the studies did not fully account for other aspects of the children’s diets or health. But in two small clinical trials performed in Australia, researchers found that children who drank whole milk for three months did not gain more weight than children who drank lower-fat milks.
There are several larger and ongoing clinical trials in the United States and Canada comparing the effects of whole milk with lower-fat options on children’s health. Ms. Lott said she hoped they would help settle this debate.
What type of milk is best for my child?
The best type of milk for a child depends on his or her health. If your child is older than 2 and is significantly overweight, “then the calories matter,” and nonfat or 1 percent milk might be a better choice, Dr. Abrams said. But for most children, he said, any type of unsweetened, pasteurized milk is fine. (Children should never consume unpasteurized or raw milk, he added, because doing so carries a risk of food-borne illness.)
Higher-fat milk might be better for a child who is underweight, Ms. Lott said. A pediatrician or dietitian can offer individualized advice, she added.
Milk consumption among U.S. children has dropped significantly in recent decades, and they have been drinking more soda, sports drinks and other sweetened beverages instead, Dr. Abrams said. That’s a concern, he added, because milk is an important source of calcium, vitamin D and protein. If allowing whole milk in schools leads to children drinking more milk, that could improve their health, he said.
But Ms. Lott lamented that the new legislation would have done more to improve children’s health if it had eliminated flavored milks from schools, since they contribute to excess added sugars in children’s diets. Such a change would be backed by better evidence, she said.
“There’s no reason they need chocolate milk or vanilla milk or any other flavors,” she said.
Alice Callahan is a Times reporter covering nutrition and health. She has a Ph.D. in nutrition from the University of California, Davis.
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