FNS Documents & Resources

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 Food Buying Guide for child nutrition programs has all of the current information in one manual to help you and your purchasing agent buy the right amount of food and the appropriate type of food for your program(s), and determine the specific contribution each food makes toward the meal pattern requirements.

Why is streamlining a big deal? Because reducing paperwork increases program efficiency, to make CACFP work better! Whether you are wondering how to make the best use of resources to implement the new meal requirements, or just looking for ideas to help you operate the program more effectively, here is information you can use!

This section describes the successes sponsors have had in meeting the unique needs of children and attracting them to their summer meal sites.

School meals are required to meet specific nutrition standards to operate the school meals programs. The standards align school meals with the latest nutrition science and the real world circumstances of America’s schools. 

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.

The purpose of this memorandum is to provide guidance for state agencies and program operators on the status of nationwide waivers of statutory and regulatory requirements in the Summer Food Service Program.

The Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs final rule was published on Jan. 26, 2012. The final rule requires that fruits and vegetables be offered as separate meal components in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs.

Attached are the Revised Meat/Meat Alternates and Milk charts of the Food Buying Guide for Child Nutrition Programs for the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs.

Attached for your use is a prototype Performance Work Statement, Evaluation Criteria and Performance Metrics document to assist state agencies that wish to procure a contract(s) to perform the performance-based reimbursement certification and other training activities to support the Certification of Compliance With Meal Requirements for the National School Lunch Program Under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 Interim Rule and the new meal pattern final rule.