This rulemaking finalizes long-term school nutrition requirements based on the goals of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025, robust stakeholder input, and lessons learned from prior rulemakings.
Healthy Eating Index scores range from 0 to 100 and are a measure of diet quality used to assess how well a set of foods aligns with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. A higher score is ideal. The FDPIR Food Package scores an 84. This is higher than the average U.S. diet, which scores a 59.
The CEP resource center provides extensive resources for parents, teachers, and school officials at the local, state and Federal level to better understand CEP and its positive benefits, along with useful tools to help facilitate successful implementation of the provision in your school!
The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act initially provided an additional 6-cents per lunch reimbursement to school food authorities that were certified to be in compliance with the new meal patterns. The increased reimbursement, a significant investment in improving the quality of school meals, became available starting Oct.1, 2012. School food authorities that continue to maintain certification of compliance continue to receive this performance based funding which is adjusted annually if needed. The current performance based reimbursement rate is 8-cents per reimbursable lunch.
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.
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.
This report, required under the 2008 Farm Bill, reviews the nutritional quality of the food package provided through USDA’s Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, comparing its content to scientific standards including the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the Dietary Reference Intakes, the Thrifty Food Plan nutrient standards and the Healthy Eating Index-2005.
This final rule makes a number of technical changes to the regulations governing the National School Lunch Program, the Special Milk Program for Children, the School Breakfast Program, state administrative expense funds, determining eligibility for free and reduced price meals and free milk in schools.