President Trump is making whole milk great again. 

The 47th president signed legislation Wednesday allowing the nation’s federal lunch programs to serve whole milk to schoolchildren, reversing an Obama-era mandate that limited options to fat-free or low-fat milk.

The bill passed both chambers unanimously late last year, and several members of Congress, including a Democrat, joined Mr. Trump as he signed the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act at the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Trump alluded to the measure’s bipartisan backing during the signing ceremony, stating that “whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, whole milk is a great thing.”

Under the new law, the federally funded National School Lunch Program — which provides meals to nearly 30 million students, with some 20 million receiving them at reduced prices or for free — will add whole milk, 2 percent milk, and “nutritionally equivalent” nondairy drinks to its beverage offerings. It will continue to supply reduced-fat and fat-free milk.

“This is the first bill signing of the new year and it will ensure that millions of school-aged children will have access to high quality milk as we make America healthy again,” Mr. Trump stated. 

The measure undermines standards outlined in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, signed by President Obama, which restricted full-fat milk options in an effort to reduce childhood obesity. On Wednesday Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called the bill a “long overdue correction to school nutrition policy that puts children’s health first” and proclaimed that Mr. Trump had “ended the war on saturated fat”  waged by previous administrations. 

Reinstating full-fat milk aligns with the Trump administration’s health initiatives. Mr. Kennedy unveiled on January 7 new dietary guidelines that flip the prior food pyramid, emphasizing full-fat dairy, protein, and healthy fats while limiting whole grains. The guidelines dictate the makeup of federal nutrition programs, affecting millions of Americans.

“In this new guidance, we are telling young people, kids, schools — you don’t need to tiptoe around fat and dairy,” the director of the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary, said at the pyramid’s release. “You don’t need to push low-fat milk to kids, and we are maintaining the 10 percent of calories as saturated fat in the guidance.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, one of the architects of Mr. Kennedy’s revamped food pyramid, lauded the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act as a “historic step” for the Make America Healthy Again movement and for American farmers. “With 8g of protein per cup, packed with calcium, potassium, and vitamins D & A, and supporting children’s brain health — whole milk delivers what real bodies need,” she wrote on X, adding the now-trending hashtag #DRINKWHOLEMILK. 

The Department of Agriculture teed up the measure last week by posting on X a poster depicting Mr. Trump with a milk mustache alongside the text: “The Milk Mustache is Back. Drink Whole Milk.”