New school lunch nutrition requirements will backfire. Kids won't eat what they don't like.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed changes to current nutrition standards for school meals served to K-12 students, but the approach ignores important facts about nutrition education.

Instead of healthier, well-nourished students, our school nutrition programs would suffer from a lack of participation and increased food waste. We should focus instead on helping schools to promote healthy choices.

The most nutritious meals are the ones students actually eat. The proposed changes would reduce key ingredients that make food palatable and have the unintended consequence of feeding more trash cans than hungry students.

The proposed regulations would require reductions in sodium and added sugars, possibly change the use of whole grains and eliminate flavored milk as an option for students. That would have a significant and unfavorable effect on students’ tastes compared to what they eat outside of school. More students – many of whom rely on school meals as their main or only source of nutrition and calories – are likely to toss their lunch trays.

Nutrition should not be a luxury: We can agree that no one in this country should go hungry. Can that help unite America?

Hunger is real. How do we solve it? Food insecurity is a solvable problem, but no one-size-fits-all solution exists

Fried food and sodas already are banned

USDA research shows that school meals are often already the healthiest meals students eat in a day.Sodas, fried foods, candy and trans-fat have been banned for almost two decades. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 increased the amount of fruit, vegetables and whole grains required in school meals. It introduced the Five Star Meal, requiring students to choose at least three of five food components: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, milk and protein or a protein alternative.

The USDA wants to use the School Nutrition Program as one of the first lines of defense in the larger battle to fight American diet-related diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases, Type 2 Diabetes and certain cancers, but it is well documented that food restrictions do not lead to positive long-term outcomes and can create unhealthy habits and mental health issues.

What’s more, according to a 2019 World Wildlife Fund report, an estimated 530,000 tons of food is wasted each year in school cafeterias. The USDA has noted that the “best way to tackle food waste is to make sure students consume what they take.” But if they don’t like what they take, they won’t eat it, as every parent has experienced.

Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store.

Moreover, school nutrition professionals, school dietitians and school food manufacturers are not in agreement with the USDA’s proposed changes. They have cited supply challenges, rising costs and students’ tastes and preferences as major obstacles. Imposing these restrictive nutrition standards would place an undue burden on schools and food manufacturers and hurt the desired outcome of serving nutritious meals to more students.

Proposed nutrition changes would add significant costs for schools

Coming out of the pandemic, 93% of nutrition directors report facing rising labor costs and severe labor shortages, 89% report lingering supply chain disruptions and shortages, 75% note record levels of meal debt and nearly 100% say that high costs driven by inflation are the top challenge.

If the proposed regulations are enacted, schools would need to adjust their purchasing, reformulate the nutritional analysis of ingredients and create new recipes and menus. That process would cost school districts millions of dollars and require hundreds of additional labor hours, during a time of unprecedented staff shortages.

Opinions in your inbox: Get exclusive access to columnists and the best of columns

Food manufacturers also would face tough business decisions. The cost of reformulating products may not be worth it for a food manufacturer to stay in the school nutrition business.The proposed nutrition standards for sodium would impose stricter limits three times over four years for breakfast and four times over six years for lunch. It takes about 18 months and approximately $500,000 to $750,000 to reformulate each new product.

A better way forward would be to provide schools with the resources to create a culture of holistic nutrition education by making it an integral part of the curriculum. For example, math lessons could require students to calculate the right caloric intake for their body type and activity level or nutrition labels could be integrated into reading instruction so students become familiar with how to determine the nutritional value of food. Science teachers could collaborate with school nutrition directors to develop lessons that illustrate the process behind how food makes it to the lunch tray.

If we want healthy kids rather than healthy trash cans, we need to rethink the proposed school nutrition guidelines.

Mike Borges is president of LINQ Nutrition, which helps districts manage school nutrition requirements. Betty Crocker is a school nutrition director for Redlands Unified School District in California.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What will kids eat? New school lunch requirements will backfire