Our Policy
Potatoes are nutrition powerhouses, offering both affordability and flexibility as America’s favorite vegetable. NPC helps ensure that potatoes are recognized by policymakers for their health benefits to families and children. NPC works with government officials to ensure that federal dietary recommendations for feeding and nutrition programs and that the Dietary Guidelines acknowledge the unique contributions of potatoes.
Dietary Guidelines for Americans
The 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans must recognize what we all know: potatoes are a vegetable, and recommendations must remain at 5 cups per week.
As the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) process is in full swing as the Advisory Committee has given their recommendations to the Secretaries of Health and Human Services (HHS) and United States Department Agriculture (USDA) for consideration as they prepare to write the actual Dietary Guidelines. In its report, the Committee recognized that potatoes and other starchy vegetables should remain in the vegetable category rather than being considered interchangeable with grains. The committee report did not however, reflect the science regarding to need to maintain current recommendations of starchy vegetables, including potatoes, and instead lowered the recommended amount.
The National Potato Council recognizes that certain activist voices will be extremely loud as the Secretary’s write the Guidelines and intend lower recommendations for consumption of potatoes and/or attempt allow America’s favorite vegetable to be interchangeable with another category entirely (grains). Such efforts have no basis in science, raise costs for
consumers, and further burden already-expensive federal nutrition programs with huge new costs. Those costly, misleading and unscientific efforts should be rejected by the DGAs and all federal policymakers outright.
School Breakfast Access for White Potatoes
Congress must continue to prevent the limitation on serving potatoes as part of federal school meals regulations through the appropriations process.
For seven years, a bipartisan provision has been included in every fiscal year’s enacted Agriculture Appropriations Bill that prevents USDA from enforcing limitations on potatoes in accessing the school breakfast program. While the regulations were updated in April 2024, they still include confusing limits on how and when potatoes can be offered and served. Now,
if schools want to substitute potatoes for fruit more than once per week, they must offer other vegetables first. Simply mandating this does not mean that children will consume more vegetables, is confusing to school meal operators, and does not reflect current science. USDA should have instead permitted any vegetable to be served, especially potatoes, that as a “Springboard” help kids eat more vegetables overall.
Congress has appropriately stepped in and prevented the regulations from being enforced, as they raise costs on the federal government and burden individual school districts in their daily attempts to comply with overly-complicated mandates for school meals. Potatoes should be an option for those school meals professionals in constructing school breakfasts that kids will consume. This appropriations provision must continue to be maintained and/or updated as school meals regulations evolve.
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
The Farm Bill, which deals with agriculture policy issues as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), was renewed most recently in December 2018. NPC continues to participate in the SNAP coalition and promote to members of Congress and the administration the benefits of all potato products being a part of SNAP. At the same time, we are monitoring federal rulemaking that may seek to amend the definition of “healthy” and inform consumers about products meeting that definition.
