Updated School Meal Standards: working towards a common goal of healthy children and helping them reach their full potential.
School meals will continue to include fruits and vegetables, emphasize whole grains, and give kids the right balance of nutrients for healthy, tasty meals. For the first time, schools will focus on products with less added sugar, especially in school breakfast.
School nutrition professionals continue to make school meals the healthiest meals children eat in a day! To take school meals to the next level, USDA is updating the school nutrition standards after considering recommendations from the most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans and listening to a diverse range of voices with experience in child nutrition and health.
Comparison Chart: Current Standards vs. Proposed Standards
This page contains regulations, policy memos, and other guidance materials relating to the nutrition standards for the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program.
The CACFP Halftime: Thirty on Thursdays webinar series is a set of interactive, skills-building webinars that focus on hot topics related to the updated Child and Adult Care Food Program meal patterns. This webinar will focus on how CACFP operators can use a food’s ingredient list to identify whole grain-rich items for their menus, with a focus on how to treat flour blends.
La serie Medio tiempo del CACFP: treinta los jueves es un conjunto de seminarios web interactivos que desarrollan habilidades y se centran en temas de interés relacionados con los patrones de comidas actualizados del Programa de Alimentos para el Cuidado de Niños y Adultos (CACFP, por sus siglas en inglés). Este seminario web se enfoca en cómo los operadores del CACFP pueden usar la lista de ingredientes de un alimento para identificar alimentos ricos en grano integral para sus menús, incluyendo cómo tratar las mezclas de harinas.
This memorandum informs stakeholders on the progress made by FNS in updating the food crediting system for all child nutrition programs. This is a first step towards improving the crediting system to best address today’s evolving food and nutrition environment and meet the needs of those operating and benefiting from the CNPs.
FNS staff discuss the updated preschool meal patterns in the National School Lunch Program (including snack service) and School Breakfast Program, as well as the updated milk requirements in the Special Milk Program, which went into effect on Oct. 1, 2017.
The National School Lunch Program Afterschool Snack Service is a federally-assisted snack service that provides cash reimbursement to encourage or assist schools in serving snacks to children after the regular school day. The afterschool snack component of the NSLP helps children fully engage in afterschool programming by filling the hunger gap many children face in the afternoon and early evening. Children participating in an approved afterschool care program age 18 and under, and participating children who turn 19 during the school year, are eligible to receive reimbursable snacks through the NSLP.