{"id":25818,"date":"2025-11-25T10:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T15:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/?p=25818"},"modified":"2025-11-05T12:58:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:58:53","slug":"bill-introduced-in-the-house-that-promotes-100-plant-based-food-and-milk-options-for-school-meals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/2025\/11\/25\/bill-introduced-in-the-house-that-promotes-100-plant-based-food-and-milk-options-for-school-meals\/","title":{"rendered":"Bill Introduced in the House that Promotes 100% Plant-Based Food and Milk Options for School Meals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/vegan-milk-in-school.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-25819\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/vegan-milk-in-school.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"112\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>by Reed Mangels, PhD, RD<\/p>\n<p>On October 28, 2025 Representatives Nydia M. Vel\u00e1zquez (D-NY) and Alma Adams (D-NC) introduced the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/email.nutrition.org\/c\/15nKaUjCF06gec0Oa1nPWCAK3rJlR6\">Plant Powered School Meals Pilot Act<\/a>, H.R. 5867. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce.<\/p>\n<p>This bill, if approved,\u00a0 would create a voluntary grant program for school districts to support schools providing 100% plant-based food and milk options. According to the text of the bill, a 100% plant-based food or milk option would not contain \u201cany animal products or byproducts, such as meat, poultry, honey, fish, dairy, or eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The funds that would be made available through the grant program could be used for:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Training school foodservice staff,<\/li>\n<li>Purchasing plant-based sources of protein and milk from \u201csocially disadvantaged producers, local producers, and women, veterans, and beginning farmers,\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Promoting the plant-based foods to students and providing nutrition education,<\/li>\n<li>Additional labor costs related to preparing and serving plant-based foods,<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The bill would also require schools to offer a non-dairy milk substitute to any student with a written request from the student\u2019s parent or guardian. The bill also allows schools to provide non-dairy milk alternatives, consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, to any student as part of a reimbursable meal, with no requirement for a doctor\u2019s note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Reed Mangels, PhD, RD On October 28, 2025 Representatives Nydia M. Vel\u00e1zquez (D-NY) and Alma Adams (D-NC) introduced the\u00a0Plant Powered School Meals Pilot Act, H.R. 5867. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce. This bill, if approved,\u00a0 would create a voluntary grant program for school districts to support schools [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25818"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25820,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25818\/revisions\/25820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}