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.
Here's how the WIC food packages are changing.
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children – also known as WIC – supports maternal and child health by providing nutritious supplemental foods, nutrition education, breastfeeding promotion and support, and referrals to important health care and other social services.
Healthy Eating Index scores range from 0 to 100 and are a measure of diet quality used to assess how well a set of foods aligns with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. A higher score is ideal. The FDPIR Food Package scores an 84. This is higher than the average U.S. diet, which scores a 59.
The market basket costs in the Thrifty Food Plan, 2021 apply to the contiguous 48 states and the District of Columbia. By law, the USDA must make cost adjustments to the Thrifty Food Plan to reflect the cost of food in Alaska and Hawaii. The Thrifty Food Plan Cost Estimates for Alaska and Hawaii report provides updated estimates of the June 2022 cost of the reevaluated Thrifty Food Plan in Alaska and Hawaii.
The USDA food plans represent a healthy diet at four different cost levels. Each food plan specifies quantities of food and beverage categories that can be purchased and prepared to make healthy meals and snacks at home.
This report presents findings from the evaluation of the first Healthy Fluid Milk Incentives project. The project tested take-up of incentives delivered through coupons issued to SNAP participants when they purchased "qualifying fluid milk" with their SNAP benefits at four pilot stores in west Texas.
SNAP healthy incentive programs encourage healthy eating by making nutritious food more accessible and affordable through coupons, discounts, gift cards, bonus items, or extra funds.
In September 2020, in response to a Congressional Directive, the USDA contracted with Insight Policy Research to conduct the Measuring the Cost of a Thrifty Food Plan in Puerto Rico study. The purpose of the study is to provide CNPP with options for measuring the cost of a TFP in Puerto Rico.