School meals are required to align with nutrition standards based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The snacks sold outside of meals must also follow federal standards—though these standards are comparatively weaker. This has led companies to sell copycat or lookalike products in schools that are visually similar to their grocery store counterparts, but which are reformulated to meet school nutrition standards.
What nutrition standards are school foods required to follow?
The USDA’s School Breakfast Program and National School Lunch Program are cornerstone federal nutrition assistance programs. School meals are one of the healthiest sources of food for the nearly 30 million kids who participate in the programs, some of whom get as much as half their daily calories at school.
By law, school meals must meet nutrition standards that are written based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). These school meal nutrition standards have undergone substantial changes over time. Following the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, the USDA issued a rule in 2012 that removed full-calorie soda and other unhealthy foods from schools, and reduced salt and unhealthy fat in school breakfast and lunch while increasing whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.
In April 2024, the USDA published a final rule updating school nutrition requirements in a long-awaited effort to further align these standards with the previously released 2020-2025 DGA. The rule instituted the first-ever added sugar limits for school meals and updated sodium standards, among other changes.
What about the snacks sold in schools outside of meals?
Competitive foods or Smart Snacks are the snacks, entrées, and beverages that students may purchase at school. They are called “competitive” foods because they compete with the federally reimbursable school meal programs. They can be available through vending machines, school stores, or in line at the school cafeteria.
Foods sold in schools outside of breakfast and lunch have to follow standards too—but these standards, established in 2016, address added sugar differently. School meals follow specific, per-product added sugar limits (and are set to implement weekly added sugar limits for school year 2027), whereas Smart Snacks looks at a product’s total sugar by weight. As a result, many snacks are too high in added sugars; harmful sweeteners and dyes are also too common in products sold to schoolchildren; and high schoolers can still purchase some sugar-sweetened beverages on campus.
What are copycat or lookalike products?
Copycat or lookalike products are packaged products that have been reformulated to meet school meal or Smart Snack standards and are sold under the same brand name as their retail counterparts, but are nutritionally different.
For example, Pepsico sells Doritos in stores but different Doritos under its Child Nutrition/K-12 label. School Doritos are slightly lower in sodium (170 mg vs. 140 mg) and have 3 g less total fat. Pop-Tarts served or sold in schools have 5 more grams of fiber thanks to whole grains, but only 2 less grams of added sugars compared to regular Pop-Tarts. This means that in terms of nutrition facts, the Doritos or Pop-Tarts that your child is purchasing in school are not the same Doritos or Pop-Tarts sold in the grocery store.
Why are competitive foods sold in schools?
Simply put: School nutrition budgets are tight, and competitive foods are sold in schools to help school nutrition departments break even.
School nutrition department budgets are separate from the rest of the school budget. Schools do receive federal reimbursement for the breakfasts and lunches they serve, but this amount, around $4.70 per student per lunch and less than $3 per breakfast, is not enough to cover all the costs of feeding their students. This means that school nutrition departments sometimes rely on foods that are less nutritious than school meals, and marketed to kids, to help themselves stay afloat.
School nutrition programs need our support: Tell Congress to increase school meal reimbursement.
USDA just released updated Dietary Guidelines. How might this change school nutrition standards?
The USDA has promised to update school nutrition standards, beginning with the 2026-2027 school year, to align school meals with the recently released 2025-2030 DGA. In an unprecedented move, the Trump administration published Dietary Guidelines that were insufficient to guide federal policy and that diverged from the science-based recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, a committee of scientists who evaluate nutrition research to inform the DGA, creating uncertainty around exactly how the USDA will update school nutrition guidelines for the upcoming school year and beyond.
USDA’s proposed rule is likely to address competitive foods in some capacity and could even directly address lookalike or copycat snacks, as these were mentioned in the first "Make America Healthy Again” report.
Sign up for CSPI alerts to stay up to date on school nutrition standards
Before new school nutrition standards are finalized, the USDA will first have to work through the federal rulemaking process, for which the first step is a proposed rule with public comment. That means you will have a chance to write to the federal government and voice your opinion on the future of school nutrition standards.
Sign up for CSPI email and text alerts
