The New Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch Program & its Implementation Challenges
It’s no secret, the Trump HHS has radically changed the US Dietary Guidelines by flipping the Food Guide Pyramid Upside Down. The USDA is responsible for National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and are in the process of implementing the Upside-Down Food Pyramid to make the National School Lunch Program meet the New Dietary Guidelines.
When I met USDA Secretary, Brooke Rollins, at the Women’s National History Month at the White House, we discussed what I called “the challenge of her lifetime in the changing for the National School Lunch Program foods and making food choices they kids will actually eat, especially the kids who need these meals: the free and reduced priced meal students.”
In fact, when I was publishing my Health Magazines, Kentuckiana HealthFitness and Kentuckiana Healthy Woman, I was involved in helping breathe new healthy ideas into the School Lunch Program in the Jefferson County Public Schools pushing a program I had developed in Clarksville Tennessee around POWER EATING for Kids.
When Michelle Obama initiated the Let’s Move Program during the Obama Administration, changing the portion sizes of the meals and adding more salad bars, the School Lunch programs in many inner cities, took a major financial hit. I was working with the Jefferson County Publics Schools as a free consultant and I was told by the Registered Dietitian, who was over the School Lunch Program at the time, many full priced students started bringing their lunches to school and that caused a major drop in the funding of the school lunch program in the district and they has to reach into the general education fund to pay for the school lunch program. She said many didn’t know this but the full paid student meals help to subsidized the free and reduce priced meals.
If this trend we to continue when the new Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch program is initiated, this could also be a problem not only for the financial part of the school lunch program but for feeding of our school children.
FYI, I worked as a USDA program reviewer for the Alaska Department of Education in the early 80s. Once a month I went out to Indian and Eskimo Villages, once a month during the school year to review the National School Lunch Programs in these schools.
Who Qualifies for Free & Reduced Price Meals?
Every child deserves a healthy meal that will help them grow, have energy to think clearly & help make them healthier in the long run.
School Lunch Today vs New Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch
How Many Kids are Fed Daily
The NSLP feeds approximately 30 million students each day: 20 million free meals, 2 million reduced-price meals and 8 million paid meals. The NSLP costs $12 – $14 billion per year (USDA federal funding) which is one of the largest nutrition programs in the country. There are approximately 4.5 – 5 billion lunches served per year.
Roadblocks to Creating the Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch Program
The Upside-Down Pyramid Meals that will be developed not only to follow the guidelines in order to get federal government reimbursements but working with school lunch budgets is another roadblock. Let’s face it, ultra-processed foods are cheap and the shelf life is longer easier to store.
A huge roadblock is many of the school lunch kitchens is that they are no longer set up to actually cook food but just reheat the food.
But the biggest roadblock will be student acceptance. Kids are used to eating ultra-processed foods and they may stop eating the school lunch meals and bring their lunches to school like what happened with Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move School Lunch Redo. The kids who get free and reduced priced meals will have to eat the food or just waste large amounts of food.
In addition, many school districts have initiated contracts so that will have to be worked out as the Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch Program is rolled out. The goal of the Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch Program is to access local farms and co-ops, and community gardens, to help reduce the cost and improve quality.
Who Creates the Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch Recipes
The new Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch program will require new recipes, the equipment to cook the new recipes, school lunch program workers to being able to cook and serve the new Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch. The FDA has appropriated $17 Million Pilot Program to Jumpstart the Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch Program. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary reported up to 70% of children’s diets now come from ultra-processed foods, which are often loaded with salt, refined sugars, cholesterol-spiking fats and additives.
The USDA School Breakfast Program
Schools choose to participate in the National School Breakfast Program. The School Breakfast serves 16 million children daily: 12.6 million Free breakfasts, 0.4 million reduce-price meals and 3.1 paid meals at a cost of $6 billion per year in federal funding. School breakfast program feeds approximately 2.6 billion breakfast meals per year. Breakfast is served in the cafeteria, grab-and-go carts, or breakfast actually served in the classroom. Moving from packaged or quick-serve foods to a Real Food Breakfast also creates many challenges.
A $17 Million Pilot Program to Jumpstart the Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch Program
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, MD, announced nationwide, up to 70% of children’s diets now come from ultra-processed foods, which are often loaded with salt, refined sugars, cholesterol-spiking fats and lots of food additives. The FDA initiated a $17 Million Pilot Program to jumpstart the Upside-Down Pyramid School Lunch Program.
“We found a grant that was studying giving Botox to bunny rabbits,” Dr. Makary recalled. “The scientific community can just get so myopic thinking about what to study. They can’t see the forest from the trees sometimes. So, we’re literally serving our kids low quality food as we fund drugs for obesity and diabetes.”
Dr. Makary said the pilot programs are switching “from using canned food to using some more fresh fruits” as well as cooking their own “dry beans.”
Some schools participating in the FDA pilot haven’t had the kitchen equipment to even get a healthier meal made, so the funding has gone toward replacing microwave ovens with real ovens.
“Some schools don’t have enough ovens and they just microwave things,” Dr. Makary said. “One school got one of their bakers to bake the bread instead of buy the pre-made bread.”
An independent review committee selected more than a dozen schools to participate in the study, including in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida and Arkansas, Dr. Makary and other FDA officials noted, with each school getting roughly $200,000 for the 2025-26 school year.
More than 30 million kids get their daily food from school lunches, and the program could inspire changes to additional communities. At least $400 million in USDA dollars per day are spent feeding the youth.
Dr. Makary said they wanted to explore whether it’s possible to transition to healthier food and whether it would have an impact on the total number of chemicals kids are consuming.
According to Dr. Makary, in the US, more than 10,000 chemicals are allowed to be used in foods, including emulsifiers, thickeners, artificial colors, flavor enhancers and shelf stabilizers.
Ultra-processed foods — such as cookies, granola bars and sugary breakfast cereals — often contain multiple additives, averaging about seven per product. Many of these foods have been used in the NSLP.
The Bottom Line
The idea is to make the School Lunch & School Breakfast more healthy to help prevent future health problems but it’s going to take the WHOLE VILLAGE TO WORK TOGETHER for the health of our children.
Note: I used ChatGPT for the graphics and pulling this blog together for this topic, but I also check the information carefully to ensure the health information is correct. In order to get the right answers & the development of these health blogs when using ChatGPT effectively, you must know how to pose the correct questions.
This content was generated with assistance from ChatGPT, an AI language model by
is a registered dietitian with a Master’s Degree in clinical nutrition. She is the Chief Blog Organizer for www.DayByDayLiving.net
Barbara worked as a research nutritionist with the military’s tri-service medical school collaborating with Department of Defense, National Health Institutes (NIH), and also United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Barbara worked as a performance nutrition consultant to Navy SEALS’ BUD/S Training Program and West Coast Navy SEAL Teams. Barbara is the former nutrition performance consultant to the University of Louisville Athletic Department.
She is the author of Fast Facts on Fast Food for Fast People and High Energy Eating Sports Nutrition Workbook for Active People used by the University of Louisville, University of Tennessee Lady Vols and the Tennessee football program, the LSU basketball program, the Buffalo Bills, the Cleveland Browns and by the United States Navy SEALs.
Barbara is the former publisher of Kentuckiana HealthFitness Magazine, Kentuckiana Healthy Woman magazine and radio show host of Health News You Can Use and a TV segment on the Local ABC station called Barbara’s Right Bite.
Barbara has over 50 years of experience in promoting healthy lifestyles to consumers. Barbara is a former runner who walks, a spinner, hiker, a pickleball player, a mother and grandmother to 13 grandchildren.
Barbara also serves on the Leadership Team for Moms for America as the Grammy Grizzlies National Group Leader. (www.momsforamerica.us).