Rebecca Mann and Melissa Herbert assembled birria grilled cheese sandwiches at North Carroll Middle School on Thursday morning, stacking slices of American cheese with spoonfuls of carnitas atop slices of whole-grain white bread. A recipe packet sat on the counter, detailing the nutritional value of the sandwiches.
Mann, cafeteria manager for North Carroll Middle and Spring Garden Elementary, and Herbert, food service area manager for Carroll County Public Schools, know that the recipes they follow must meet specific national standards for nutrition, an ever-changing benchmark.
In early January, the Trump administration published its new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, emphasizing “a dramatic reduction in highly processed foods laden with refined carbohydrates, added sugars, excess sodium, unhealthy fats, and chemical additives.”
As the dietary guidelines shift, federal groups, food manufacturers, state school boards and local school systems have to determine how to adjust school menus.
School nutrition officials are determining how the changes will impact the hundreds of thousands of Maryland students who participate in federal food programs daily, but the turnaround for this process is not quick. Product and recipe development, testing and research take time.
Gordana Schifanelli, a spokesperson for Somerset County Public Schools, said that county’s Board of Education “will be reassessing dietary plans” in response to dietary guideline updates. Gboyinde Onijala, spokesperson for Baltimore County Public Schools, wrote “there is no immediate impact to BCPS,” and Wicomico County Public Schools said, “we are awaiting word from [the Maryland State Department of Education] on how dietary recommendation changes at the federal level will be addressed at the state and then local level.”
What is in the new guidelines?
The newest guidelines maintain many recommendations from prior iterations, such as limiting saturated fat and sodium, and emphasizing whole foods; however, there is now an increased push for consuming animal-based proteins.
Ben Marcus, a parent of children in Carroll County schools and a former federal worker for the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the external affairs team, said this is a notable difference from prior administrations. Marcus joined USDA in May 2022 and left in April 2025 amid Department of Government Efficiency efforts to shrink the federal workforce.
“The previous administration was moving toward more plant-based recommendations,” he said. “[That] does not mean that animal proteins are not important in a diet, but the inclusion of things like … recommending the consumption of more red meat and of more cow dairy was not being prioritized [in the past].”
In addition to the new guidelines, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins served up an updated version of an iconic visual representation of healthy eating: the food pyramid. The “New Pyramid” ushers in a new era of eating recommendations as a part of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, or MAHA. It is also the administration’s visual indicator that it is shaking up nutrition policy.
A cornerstone of Kennedy’s MAHA movement is opposition to ultra-processed or highly processed foods. “For decades we’ve been misled,” the USDA “Real Food” page says, “by guidance that prioritized highly processed food, and are now facing rates of unprecedented chronic disease.”
How do dietary guidelines for Americans work?
All federally funded meal programs must abide by the established Dietary Guidelines for Americans to qualify for reimbursement. The guidance is updated every five years.
“Updates will be made through formal rule-making, a multistep process that includes opportunities for public comment, to ensure USDA’s nutrition programs support healthy choices, healthy outcomes, and healthy families,” a USDA spokesperson said in an email.
The Maryland State Department of Education wrote in an email that “specific guidance on USDA meal requirement updates has not been issued yet. There is a regulatory process for the development of the updates, and it may be a few months before implications for school meals are known.”
Diane Pratt-Heavner is the spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, a professional association representing more 50,000 school nutrition professionals. She said school meals already have to meet limits on calories, sodium and added sugar. In July 2025, added sugar product limits were implemented for cereal, yogurt and milk, according to Pratt-Heavner. Added sugar limits for entire meals will take effect in July 2027, she said.
“School meal programs, have already implemented many of the recommendations in the dietary guidelines,” Pratt-Heavner said. “There’s been a big focus in this new DGAs on whole foods, and schools are already serving whole foods to students with those fruit and vegetable sides and milk as the beverage of choice.”
Adjustments for manufacturers
Cooking school lunches from scratch is impractical for most public school systems, and many of the meals served in school cafeterias are made by manufacturers who work with USDA to develop products that meet the standards. While North Carroll Middle offered birria grilled cheese Thursday, it also served frozen pizza it bought from a food manufacturer.
Karen Sarno, supervisor of food services for Carroll County Public Schools, said: “A lot of times people don’t realize that the food we get produced for the school meals program is specially prepared for our market. The pizza that you’ll see has a whole-grain rich crust, it has a lower-fat-and-sodium-content cheese topping. If we’re putting pepperoni or sausage on it, that’s also specified to be a little bit more nutrient-dense and healthier.”
Food manufactures will work in partnership with federal groups to ensure their products meet school standards.
“You can’t force … some company that makes school meals to now suddenly be designing something else,” Marcus said. “Government doesn’t have that kind of power.”
Ultimately, creating products that meet the standards “has to be a joint project with industry to make sure that those products are available,” he said.
Josh Davis, Kiersten Hacker and Racquel Bazos contributed to this article.
Have a news tip? Contact Gabriella Fine at gfine@baltsun.com or at 443-900-1296.
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