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.
USDA is extending the public comment period on the proposed rule, “Child Nutrition Programs: Revisions to Meal Patterns Consistent With the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans,” to May 10, 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.
Inspired by Team Nutrition’s CACFP Halftime: Thirty on Thursdays Training Webinars, these ready-to-go presentation slides can be used by state agencies, sponsoring organizations, and others to train providers, operators, and menu planners on the CACFP meal patterns.
Comparison Chart: Current Standards vs. Proposed Standards
This pre-recorded webinar features USDA Farm to School Program staff, who summarize grantee reporting requirements and review the processes for submitting no-cost extensions, as well as project and budget amendments.
The CACFP Halftime: Thirty on Thursdays webinar series is a set of interactive, skills-building webinars that focus on hot topics related to the updated Child and Adult Care Food Program meal patterns. This webinar will focus on how CACFP operators can use a food’s ingredient list to identify whole grain-rich items for their menus, with a focus on how to treat flour blends.
This webinar will focus on how CACFP operators can identify grain-based desserts, and use this knowledge to plan menus that meet program requirements.