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.
Schools provide some of the healthiest meals that kids eat which play an important role in providing the nutrition they need to grow and learn and school meals are about to get even better We know you want the best for our nation's children and USDA is investing in school meals to make them even healthier over the next several years.
This final rule - Child Nutrition Programs: Revisions to Meal Patterns Consistent with the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans - is the next step in continuing the science-based improvement of school meals and advancing USDA’s commitment to nutrition security.
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.
Provisions in the final rule that could impact CACFP and/or SFSP.
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.
A webinar for state agency and school food authority staff focused on the community eligibility provision.
The Operational Challenges in Child Nutrition Programs surveys, are designed to collect timely data on emerging school food service operational challenges, including but not limited to supply chain disruptions, food costs, and labor shortages, and/or related issues.