FNS Documents & Resources

This rulemaking proposes long-term school nutrition standards based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025, and feedback the USDA received from child nutrition program stakeholders during a robust stakeholder engagement campaign. 

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFKA; PL 111-296) required the USDA Food and Nutrition Service to conduct a demonstration that adds Medicaid to the list of programs used to directly certify students for free school meals. Although students receiving Medicaid are not categorically eligible for free meals, the DC-M demonstration authorizes selected States and districts to use income information from Medicaid files to directly certify those students found to be eligible for free meals.

This document informs the public about a change in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans that affects the proposed rule "Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs'' issued by the Department of Agriculture and published in the Federal Register on Jan. 13, 2011.

The analysis conducted in this study builds on these two strands of the literature and uses three alternate definitions of breakfast: Consumption of any food or beverage. Breakfast intake of food energy greater than 10 percent of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA). Consumption of foods from at least two of five main food groups and intake of food energy greater than 10 percent of the RDA. 

The National School Lunch Act requires that schools that are participating in the National School Lunch or School Breakfast Programs claim reimbursements only for lunches or breakfasts which meet the nutrition standards of the National School Lunch Act, including compliance with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.