CHICAGO, April 20, 2026 — While school foodservice directors in the United States await new federal guidelines for what to offer students, their counterparts in the United Kingdom are digesting the standards they’ll need to meet under the first update in school nutrition standards in a decade.
The British regulations would apply to all schools with foodservices. In the U.S., the regulations are only binding on facilities that participate in the National School Lunch Program.
Although the nations share the aim of having schools serve healthier food, the specifics for achieving that goal differ dramatically.
In the U.K., for instance, the Department of Education said it intends to ban pizza and all fried foods from cafeterias because of their fat content.
Although the particulars of the new U.S. standards have yet to be aired, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has shown less concern about curbing fat consumption. Among the recommended changes is a switch from skim or 2% milk to whole-fat milk.
Together with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the USDA has also called for increasing the amount of protein all Americans should consume, while still holding fat consumption below 10% of an individual’s total caloric intake.
Both nations are aiming to drastically limit the amount of sugar that students are offered. The new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the basis of the U.S. lunch-program guidelines, calls for limiting consumption of added sugars to 10 grams per meal.
The U.K. has yet to set a specific limit but said it would press schools to replace sugar-laden items like desserts and snacks with fruits.
Both nations also vow to lower how much sodium is offered to students.
U.K.’s Education Department offered several examples of items it’d like to see schools offer in place of deep-fried and sugary fare. Instead of sausage rolls, a British staple, the department said it favors such items as spaghetti bolognese, burritos, cottage pie with a root-vegetable mash, jerk chicken with rice and peas, and a roasted chickpea, vegetable and mozzarella wrap.
Britain’s school foodservice standards have not been updated in more than 10 years—a marked difference from the situation in the U.S., where guidelines are often tweaked or significantly altered with the release every five years of new Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
“Today we are launching the most ambitious overhaul of school food in a generation, and it is long overdue,” said U.K. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson.
Both nations say a major overhaul of school foodservice standards is necessary because school-aged children are in the midst of an obesity epidemic.
In announcing its new standards, the U.K. also cited a surge in tooth decay among British youngsters aged 5 to 9.
The Education Department said it will solicit input from parents and students over a nine-week stretch to refine its new standards. It also revealed that it will develop a new enforcement process to ensure schools meet the new standards.
The goal is to have that preparation done by September, with enforcement set to begin in September 2027.
The U.K. does not have a program comparable to the United States’ program for providing underprivileged students with free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches. British students aged 4 to 7 are eligible for free meals regardless of their household’s income. Older students can qualify on the basis of their parents or guardians’ income for free meals. An estimated 2.2 million youngsters were eligible during the 2024-2025 school year.
In addition, the U.K. funds what it calls breakfast clubs, or school meal services that provide free breakfasts to 142,000 students in 745 schools.
In contrast, the U.S.’s National School Lunch Program provides free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches to 29.9 million youngsters across 95,000 schools. It ranks as one of the federal government’s major relief initiatives, with an annual budget of about $18.8 billion.
Federal officials originally set this month as their target for releasing the new nutrition guidelines for U.S. schools. But USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins recently hedged on that estimate, saying the first stab at the guidelines will be sometime “mid-spring.”