The CACFP meal patterns lay the foundation for a healthy eating pattern for children and adults in care. We developed optional best practices that build on the meal patterns and highlight areas where centers and day care homes may take additional steps to further improve the nutritional quality of the meals you serve.
These best practices reflect recommendations from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to help increase participants’ consumption of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, and reduce the consumption of added sugars and saturated fats.
We highly encourage centers and day care homes to implement these best practices in order to ensure children and adults are getting the optimal benefit from the meals they receive while in care.
- Infants
Support mothers who choose to breastfeed their infants by encouraging them to supply breastmilk for their infants while in day care and offer a quiet, private area that is comfortable and sanitary for mothers who come to the center or day care home to breastfeed.
- Vegetables and Fruit
- Make at least one of the two required components of a snack a vegetable or a fruit.
- Serve a variety of fruits and choose whole fruits (fresh, canned, dried, or frozen) more often than juice.
- Provide at least one serving each of dark green vegetables, red and orange vegetables, beans, peas, and lentils, starchy vegetables, and other vegetables once per week.
- Grains
Provide at least two servings of whole grain-rich grains per day.
- Meat and Meat Alternates
- Serve only lean meats, nuts, and legumes.
- Limit serving processed meats to no more than one serving per week.
- Serve only natural cheeses and choose low-fat or reduced fat-cheeses.
- Milk
- Serve only unflavored milk to all participants. If flavored milk is served to children six years old and older, or adults, use the Nutrition Facts Label to select and serve flavored milk that contains no more than 22 grams of total sugars per eight fluid ounces, or the flavored milk with the lowest amount of sugar if flavored milk within this sugar limit is not available.
- Serve water as a beverage when serving yogurt in place of milk for adults.
- General Best Practices
- Incorporate seasonal and locally produced foods into meals.
- Limit serving purchased pre-fried foods to no more than one serving per week.
- Avoid serving non-creditable foods that are sources of added sugars, such as sweet toppings (e.g., honey, jam, syrup), mix-in ingredients sold with yogurt (e.g., honey, candy, or cookie pieces), and sugar sweetened beverages (e.g., fruit drinks or sodas).
- Adult day care centers should offer and make water available to adults upon their request, throughout the day.
Questions? Contact your state or regional office.