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.
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.
The goal of the dashboard is to provide national and state level visualization of meals served, participation, and funding data for the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Child and Adult Care Food Program, and Summer Food Service Program. The dashboard can be used by federal, state, and local organizations to assess trends in child nutrition program activity.
Check out this database to access vendor-specific product information for all direct delivered USDA Foods for the National School Lunch Program.
List of NPA approved processors for USDA Foods in Schools by school year.
The USDA Foods Toolkit is a collection of valuable resources to assist child nutrition professionals in effectively using their USDA Food entitlement and to help them educate students, staff, and the community about the healthy contributions that USDA Foods provide to their meal programs.
USDA has established procedures to annually collect and publish the paid lunch prices charged by school food authorities.
The Federal Register notices announce the national average value of donated foods or, where applicable, cash in lieu of donated foods, each school year (July 1st through June 30th) for each lunch served by schools participating in the National School Lunch Program, and for each lunch and supper served by institutions participating in the Child and Adult Care Food Program.