Dairy Report: Free School Lunches Helping Offset Dairy Supplies

The USDA has extended the program to allow all schools to offer free breakfast and lunch to students. This is also helping eat into U.S. dairy supplies. The program allows students from across the country to eat school meals for free and Rabo AgriFinace’s Ben Laine says that program, along with the fact that most students are back in person this school year, are helping offset high dairy production levels this year.

“Now that we’ve got more kids actually physically standing in that lunch line picking up that milk, it’s going to be a benefit to fluid milk,” Laine says. “It’s going to be a benefit to clearing up some of that aspect of dairy production, and that’s helped relieve some of the surplus milk that we were dealing with a couple of months ago as school started ramping up. As the milk stream started moving towards that school lunch program, that’s what helped pull us away from some of the high levels of cheese production that we’ve seen kind of starting to get at risk of being a little too heavy. So, I think the school lunch program is useful for pulling some of that surplus milk away.”

Another boost is in the form of what type of milk is being offered in school. Nearly a year and a half ago, the USDA reinstated low-fat flavored milk as an option in school. The International Dairy Foods Association told AgDay that continuing to offer 1% chocolate and other flavored milks is included in the continuing resolution bill in congress.

Whole vs. Low-Fat

It’s been an age-old debate in dairy. Which is better for kids? – Low-fat or whole milk? A new study is shedding some light. It says that for kids there’s little to no difference between the two options.

Researchers from Edith Cowan University concluded that whole-fat milk is just as good for kids low-fat milk. They tracked 49 children between the ages of four and six for three months. One group was low-fat dairy while the other was given whole-fat dairy products. The groups had no idea which category they were consuming.

The researchers then assessed each child’s obesity, body composition and blood pressure. They say kids assigned to low-fat dairy had fewer calories consumed, but often compensated by eating more of other foods. They concluded eating both forms of dairy showed no significant differences to both cardiovascular health and obesity.