Local schools are welcoming less stringent lunch requirements that will allow them to avoid cutting salt in their meals and serve less whole grain foods.

Under the recently announced changes, schools will be permitted to continue seeking waivers in complying with federal regulations that all served grains be 50 percent whole grain. Additionally, the salt ceiling for elementary school meals is staying at 1,230 milligrams, as reported by The Associated Press.

That’s good news for Gina Howard, who directs Warren County Public Schools’ food service.

“We have met those requirements each year, but in some situations we do see a hardship with the likability of some products with our students,” she said.

Kim Simpson, food service director for the Bowling Green Independent School District, said the recent standards have become more expensive to comply with. She responded to questions in an email.

“We welcome the flexibility that is coming in the future,” she wrote. “The next sodium level that we were supposed to meet next year was going to be very difficult to meet. We also asked for the whole grain requirements to be loosened.”

School districts across the country were expected to drop their sodium levels to 935 milligrams per meal, but the current ceiling will be in place until at least 2020, the AP reported. The Food and Drug Administration recommends that general populations have no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium each day.

Critics contend the move locks in dangerously high levels of sodium in school lunches. Among them is Margo Wootan, a lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

“The Trump administration is showing in two important ways that it puts business interests before its populist rhetoric on the campaign trail and what mainstream Americans want,” Wootan told the AP.

Still, Howard and Simpson see the changes as positive, especially when it comes to easing the whole grain food requirement.

“It would allow us to be a little bit more flexible in possibly serving a regular pasta and being able to serve the white rice that our student population enjoys,” she said.

Simpson echoed that sentiment, noting that it amounts to an extra cost for the district.

“An example would be macaroni and cheese,” she wrote. “In the South, this is considered a comfort food, but made with whole grain macaroni there is no ‘comfort’ to it. Another example is saltine crackers. The cost for whole grain saltines from our distributor is 4 or 5 times the cost of regular saltines.”

When the stricter standards were put in place under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, Simpson’s district saw a decline in meal participation.

“I think much of this was due to the fact that our food manufacturers were still in a trial and error phase of producing food that met the regulations, but still tasted good,” Simpson wrote, citing pizza as one example.

“The crust now has to be whole grain and the pizza has to meet lower fat and lower sodium requirements. The first pizzas produced to meet these regulations were substantially different from what the students were accustomed to, but through formula changes now you can hardly tell a difference. In the past several years our lunch participation has gone back up, but not to the level it was before the Act was put into place.”

The AP reported that the changes reflect recommendations from the School Nutrition Association, which represents food service directors and food vendors. However, the changes don’t touch requirements that students must take fruits and vegetables from their lunch lines.

“We offer a wide array of fresh fruits and vegetables daily so there are a lot of options to choose from, but some students just do not want a fruit or vegetable and so it ends up in the trash,” Simpson wrote.

A typical school lunch in Simpson’s district consists of a pizza, nachos or a sandwich along with a hot vegetable, fresh fruits, vegetables and milk. Her schools also serve locally grown tomatoes, cucumbers, blueberries and lettuce year round with other locally grown foods when available.

That’s also the case for students in Warren County Public Schools, Howard said.

“Right now we’re serving fresh strawberries with two different farms along with planning our blueberry purchases for the following year,” she said.

Overall, Howard sees the standards as a positive.

“I think the standards are great for our country because we are all serving the good quality nutrition to our students,” she said. “I think as nutritional professionals we need to be providing the best for our students, and I feel like the regulations help us do that.”

However, tighter standards have to be balanced with serving as many kids as possible, Simpson said.

“Our participation is good now, but it is important that we feed as many kids as possible because our community has a lot of food insecure households,” she wrote. “Many of our students returned from being home on spring break very hungry.”

– Follow education reporter Aaron Mudd on Twitter @BGDN_edbeat or visit bgdailynews.com.