After writing about the dairy debacle a few days ago (half of dairy farmers will go out of business if current trends--price and consumption--continue) a reader named Pegi sent me a wonderful email.  Here it is:

One of the factors leading to reduced milk consumption is the USDA. They make the rules for the school lunch program. Children are given skim or 1% milk, which is frequently handled poorly, and told "This is milk. It is good for you. Drink it." Who on earth would want to drink that crap? Then they add chocolate and sugar to it and complain of its being fattening.  

WIC only allows 1% milk. And the USDA insists that this is healthy!

I can understand pasteurizing milk that is sold in schools, but at least whole milk would be palatable!

HR 5640 would allow the sale of unflavored milk in school lunch. Please urge people to support it.

So I checked into HR 5640.  It has been introduced by Rep. Tom Marino (R-PA) and is titled The Whole Milk Act.  Currently it's in the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.  Right now the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act prescribes "unflavored fluid milk" as a legal substance for schools that participate in the school lunch program.  Due to Dietary Guidelines interpretations, that can only be 1 percent milk (skim milk). 

Marino's amendment would change the wording in the school lunch program to allow "unflavored whole milk."  By changing the word "fluid" to "whole" it would allow the kidos to drink full fat, brain-feeding, nutrient-dense whole milk.

Thank you, Pegi, for pointing out something I did not know--that it is ILLEGAL for our school lunch program to offer whole milk.  How absurd is that?  In Europe, they drink RAW (unpasteurized) WHOLE milk.  That's why they're all dying over there and why everyone is fat.  Good grief, Charlie Brown.

Which leads me to say, the best thing you can do for your little one, if he/she is in a school lunch program school, is to send them with their own lunch, including raw whole milk.  These issues have two response points.  One is to urge passage of this bill.  The second is to make the whole thing irrelevant by sending integrity food to school with your little one.  Let's do both.

What do you send in your child's lunch box?