Fat cloud over school lunches may have a soy milk silver lining
WASHINGTON D.C.––If U.S. president Donald Trump imagined that his January 14, 2026 media conference held to celebrate his signing of the Whole Milk For Healthy Kids Act might upstage the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis a week earlier by ICE agent Jonathan Good, it did not.
Not even close. The Whole Milk For Healthy Kids Act did get 4,270 mass media mentions on January 14, 2026, according to Google AI, but Renee Good, already dead for seven days, was mentioned 69,400 times.
But even Trump himself did not appear to take signing the Whole Milk For Healthy Kids Act very seriously.
Five-day-old milk for reporters
“There was a glass bottle of milk on the Resolute Desk,” reported Will Weissert of Associated Press. “Donald Trump promised to get to it soon.
“But first he had to talk about Iran, the capture of someone accused of leaking secret information about Venezuela, and a pair of executive orders he was issuing.
“Even by Trump standards,” assessed White House correspondent Weissert, “the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act signing was a surreal scene.
“Trump eventually pointed back at the uncapped bottle on his desk and said, ‘It just looks so good sitting there.’
“We have some milk here,” Trump said. “It’s been sitting here for five days. I brought it so the press could have some.”
Five days, as most milk-drinkers should know, is about four days and 23 hours past the safety limit for drinking even pasturized unrefrigerated milk.
Finished Weissert, “The event ended with the milk bottle untouched.”
Trump fell asleep
Observed Kathleen O’Boyle and Hollie Beale for Irish Times, “Fox News cut away from a Donald Trump live conference in the Oval Office as he spoke about [a new law] that allows whole and 2% milk to be served in schools participating in the National School Lunch Program. The break in transmission was noteworthy, given the network’s customary practice of airing Trump events from start to finish.”
By the time Trump arrived at discussing the Whole Milk For Healthy Kids Act, “The president’s eyes were completely shut at multiple points of the ceremony,” reported New Republic, posting a photograph illustrating the point by Brendan Smialowski of Agence France Press.
Trump was “seen looking drowsily on as agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins droned on about milk, flanked by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former housing secretary Ben Carson,” said New Republic.
“After he woke up, Trump signed legislation allowing public schools to serve whole and 2% milk, reversing an Obama-era policy that limited schools to fat-free or low-fat options,” New Republic finished.
“Enthusiasm of the dairy industry may be misplaced”
Dairy industry media of course celebrated the signing of the Whole Milk For Healthy Kids Act, which cleared Congress as S. 222.
Despite that, “The enthusiasm of the dairy industry for this bill may be misplaced, “pointed out Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle,
“The dairy industry is understandably pleased with S. 222,” Pacelle told ANIMALS 24-7. “Getting whole milk back in some schools has been a long-time ambition of the industry. But the language in S. 222 says the schools may offer whole milk or 2% fat milk, and that same conditional opportunity will exist for soy milk.
“Other milks may not be far off from having nutritional equivalency, and may be on the menu in the years ahead.”
Schools must give lactose-intolerant children a plant-based option
Meanwhile, under the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, Pacelle continued, “schools must give children a plant-based milk option of their choice if they have a note from a parent, guardian, or doctor, based on lactose intolerance.
“That’s why we are so excited about this bill,” Pacelle explained. “It lifts the cow’s milk mandate or monopoly that has been in place for 80 years, and broadens out a variety of plant-based and animal-based milk options for children to choose from.
“Our argument is, ‘Let the milks compete,’ just as they do in coffee houses, supermarkets, and other retail settings.”
29% of milk cartons dumped unopened
The U.S. dairy industry seems to believe that school children will opt for whole milk, if whole milk is offered in lunch rooms, but Pacelle mentioned, as he often did in campaigning––alongside the dairy industry––for the passage of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, that “USDA statistics show 29% of milk cartons in schools are discarded unopened, wasting an estimated $300 to $500 million in taxpayer dollars every year.
“It’s no mystery why,” Pacelle added, since about 60% to 80% of African-Americans, 80% to 90% of Native Americans, 90% of Asian Americans, “and more than half of Latino children—along with many Greeks, Italians, Jews, and Arabs—are lactose intolerant.”
That would amount to a minimum of 34% and perhaps up to 50% of all U.S. school children.
Animal advocacy enthusiasm muted
Except from Pacelle, animal advocacy enthusiasm for the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act signing has so far been muted, perhaps partly because the outcome of the Act is uncertain until milk trays responding to the Act arrive in schools, and partly because whatever the outcome is, the motivation of Congress and Donald Trump was not to do anything good for animals.
The biggest damper on animal advocacy enthusiasm over the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act coming into effect, however, may have been the January 7, 2026 unveiling of a new “food pyramid” clearly designed to boost animal agriculture.
“After multiple delays, the Trump administration finally released the latest version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” summarized Seth Millstein, staff reporter for Sentient, an online periodical that investigates and explains factory farms and their effect on climate, animals, health, politics, and more.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Food pyramid “flipped on its head”
“The document advises Americans to eat more red meat and dairy, cautions against added sugars and ultraprocessed foods, and flips the food pyramid on its head,” Millstein summarized.
“The dietary guidelines are written and released every five years by the Department of Health & Human Services and the Department of Agriculture,” Millstein explained.
“The document guides many of the government’s most significant food programs. School lunch offerings, and the foods available for purchase with SNAP benefits,” Millstein continued, “must adhere to its recommendations. All in all, the dietary guidelines influence over $40 billion in federal spending annually.”
“Big Ag meddling”
Elaborated Humane World for Animals president Kitty Block and Humane World for Animals Legislative Fund president Sara Amundson in a jointly written blog, “The history of Big Ag’s [agribusiness] political meddling with the dietary guidelines of the United States goes back nearly 50 years, to 1977, when the first such guidelines were issued, and it has never been about assuring the better health of Americans.
“In 2026,” Block and Amundson charged, “the industry’s concerns remain the same as always. It is about building markets for producers, maximizing profits, and misshaping the food pyramid in favor of meat and dairy consumption.
“It is also about glossing over the association of animal products with saturated fats, and stifling efforts to promote the benefits of plant-based eating for human health.
“Industry’s heavy hand”
“This,” Block and Amundson continued, in perhaps their strongest ever conflict with either the first or the second Donald Trump administration, “is the indispensable context for the Trump administration’s recent guidelines recommending that Americans increase their consumption of full-fat dairy products and red meat.
“Such counsel goes against what the World Health Organization and just about every other health authority in the world says about healthy diets,” Block and Amundson pointed out.
“The clearest evidence of industry’s heavy hand in the report,” Block and Amundson indicted, “involves the document’s general statements on cholesterol-raising saturated fat. The recommendation to limit saturated fat, capped at 10% of daily calories, part of every version of the guidelines since 1990, remains in place.
Boosts consumption of saturated fats
“However, like nearly all previous versions,” Block and Amundson recalled, “the references to saturated fat come with no clarity on where that fat is primarily derived from: dairy products and meat, which are known drivers of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.
“This vagueness plays right to the interests of the meat and dairy industries,” Block and Amundson assessed. “The report encourages increased consumption of foods higher in saturated fats including milk, red meat, butter, and beef tallow, but it doesn’t make the connection between the consumption of these products and the health dangers of such fats.
“The primary authors,” Block and Amundson mentioned, “include scientists with substantive ties to the National Pork Board and the National Dairy Council, among other industry trade associations.”
Block and Amundson further noted that, “The report disingenuously attacks the nutrition guidelines issued under a previous administration [actually both the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations] which strongly endorsed plant-based eating and called for a decrease in consumption of animal-sourced protein foods.
“Touts meat & dairy”
“A rejection of such recommendations is precisely what Big Ag wants and expects in a nutrition policy,” Block and Amundson said, “and it’s what this one delivers; it touts meat and dairy without qualification, while disparaging vegetarian and vegan diets with trite and hackneyed admonitions concerning their alleged nutritional deficiencies.”
The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act may have opened a path around the Trump administration promotion of one particular dairy product, whole milk, and if Pacelle is right in his view of the likely outcome, could upset the whole now inverted “food pyramid.”
But Block and Amundson, who worked for Pacelle during the 14 years he headed the Humane Society of the U.S., recently renamed Humane World for Animals, and succeeded to the leadership after his 2018 departure, are much less optimistic.
“The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act,” Block and Amundson charged, “is another sign of Big Ag’s unyielding and self-serving grip on America’s nutrition policy.
“Excludes milk fat from calculations of saturated fat content”
“This measure excludes milk fat from calculations of saturated fat content. It is part and parcel of the same mindset,” Block and Amundson said, “that has successfully blurred the connection between bad fats and animal products in the dietary guidelines.
“It’s not the public health sector that lobbied for this legislation,” observed Block and Amundson, “which reverses the federal government’s removal of whole milk from school meals in 2012 because of concerns over how saturated fats could affect children. It’s the dairy industry, doing what it’s always done: treating the federal government and the U.S Congress as servants to its interests.”
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is a foot in the door for plant-based milk producers, beginning with the soy milk industry, but as every traveling salesman, door-to-door campaigner, and reporter trying to get a quote from a reluctant source knows, a foot in the door is just the beginning of whatever follows, and the foot is very likely to get slammed and stomped before a positive outcome follows.
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Although physicians helped support the placement of plant milks in schools, their responses to the new dietary guidelines is troubling.
As stated on January 7, 2026 in The NY Times article “Kennedy Flips Food Pyramid to Emphasize Red Meat and Whole Milk”—–
“putting steak, cheese, and whole milk near the top…recommending that people cook with butter and beef tallow…”—–
“The guidelines have been endorsed by The American Medical Association.”
“The American Heart Association issued a lukewarm statement of support for the new guidelines, voicing concern.”
Where are the doctors?
Where is the outrage?
Where is the courage?
Regarding the new law placing plant milks in schools–
Huge benefit would come from the active involvement of farm animal sanctuaries who intimately know and love cows and their calves and recognize and feel the horror of what is done to them in animal agriculture.
Although overwhelmed with the daily work of taking care of these animals, entering the political arena, spreading the word about the new law, and encouraging their visitors and website readers to engage with school administrators for the inclusion of plant milks would further support the law. As in other areas of animal protection, laws need to be enforced and actualized. Otherwise there is no difference between having or not having a law.
As someone whose parents bought into the “milk is healthy for kids” BS and later rejected it because of extreme lactose intolerance, I think it’s ludicrous that kids’ parents should have to request plant-based milk for kids’ school lunches; but at least the alternative is there.
Sharing with gratitude.
All readers who have school-age children should personally share the non-dairy milk-relevant section of this bill with their school administrators. Do this even if your children don’t eat school lunch or don’t drink plant-based milk–because you can bet 100% that your child has classmates who would prefer a nondairy option. Lactose intolerance is so common.
I think that many rules like this simply fall through the cracks with everything else schools are facing. It will take parents communicating with administrators to get nondairy milk as a choice in smaller-town schools in particular; not out of admin malice necessarily, but rather simple ignorance of the rule change.
Lactose intolerance….OF COURSE. Because cow’s milk is for COWS. DUH.
What is beyond comprehension is why anyone would listen to the government’s recommendation on ANYTHING, but least of all FOOD. They don’t give a damn about our health; it’s all nothing but big business support for their buddies in beef and dairy industries, animal ag.
Food is OUR responsibility to self research and/or discuss with our doctors and nutritionists. This goes for other other aspects of our health as well. Let’s face it, if the government cared about our health, millions of Americans would not be dealing with exploding healthcare costs while government does NOTHING. There should be two new laws enacted when sane leadership returns: No pay for Congress when they are shutting down the country over the budget and no health insurance for Congress until EVERYBODY has the same kind of health insurance as they do.
Irene is so right. The law (all laws) must be enforced and actualized, and neither Congress nor the President will do this work for the people. So we are going to do it! Myself and Wayne worked for almost 4 years to pass the FISCAL bill (which folded into the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act) and now that it is across the finish line; well it feels as if the work has just begun. Come along with us on The Justice Tour, starting in schools in the mid-west in early April. Check it out here: https://switch4good.org/justice-tour/ and please let me know if your kid’s school would like us to make a stop.