FNS Documents & Resources

On April 25, 2024, FNS published the final rule, Child Nutrition Programs: Meal Patterns Consistent With the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This rule includes minor updates to the Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program to better align Child Nutrition Program requirements. These updates represent continued progress toward supporting the nutrition quality of school meals, strengthening the Child Nutrition Programs, and advancing USDA’s commitment to nutrition security. 

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.

FNS is conducting additional demonstration projects to expand the evaluation of direct certification with Medicaid for both free and reduced price meal eligibility in NSLP and SBP.

The Integrated Food Management System replaces the legacy, Automated Inventory System. IFMS consolidates food distribution transactions into a seamless, easy-to-use cloud-based platform.

The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) will discontinue the requirement for vendors to use high security seals to secure USDA Foods deliveries as of July 1, 2023. 

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. 

Letter to states from the USDA Secretary to encourage you to help schools in your state keep kids fed despite ongoing challenges associated with the pandemic, ongoing supply chain issues, and labor shortages.

The ITO/state agency must submit Form FNS-152, Monthly Distribution of Donated Foods to Family Units,  that documents the data obtained in the physical inventory with the perpetual inventory record. Shortages must be reported to the appropriate FNS regional office.

This webinar provided an overview of the FDPIR Inventory Calculator and the FDPIR inventory monitoring process and discussed how to complete an inventory calculator, how to analyze the calculator results, and how the inventory calculator can help with order monitoring and planning. This webinar is appropriate for staff who use or will use the calculator, Team Leads, and Branch Chiefs.