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.
This memorandum provides guidance to state distributing agencies and recipient agencies on the use of market basket analysis in procuring processed end products for USDA Foods in Schools and commercial goods for the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Summer Food Service Program, and Child and Adult Care Food Program.
The purpose of this policy memorandum is to clarify the options available to state distributing agencies or recipient agencies in assigning value to USDA donated foods for audit purposes.
The new standards will allow schools to offer healthier snack foods for our children, while limiting junk food served to students. Students will still be able to buy snacks that meet common-sense standards for fat, saturated fat, sugar, and sodium, while promoting products that have whole grains, low fat dairy, fruits, vegetables or protein foods as their main ingredients.
Today’s unpredictable economy has made it important to consider accounting for the fluctuating costs of goods and services that are beyond the control of either the school food authority or the vendor.