The CACFP meal patterns lay the foundation for a healthy eating pattern for children and adults in care. USDA also 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 they serve.
You are invited to share these messages and resources about how school meals help empower children to grow, learn and thrive.
This final rule - Child Nutrition Programs: Meal Patterns Consistent With the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans - is the next step in continuing the science-based improvement of school meals.
These resources are periodically updated to reflect changes to the CACFP and highlight new resources available for households.
The Professional Standards Summary of Updates flyer provides an overview of the professional standards requirements which consist of hiring standards and annual training requirements for state directors of school nutrition programs, state director of distributing agencies, school nutrition program directors, managers, and staff.
The Department's annual adjustments to the Income Eligibility Guidelines (IEGs), are used in determining eligibility for free and reduced price meals or free milk.
This fact sheet summarizes the methods used in the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study (SNMCS) to collect, process, and analyze data to estimate the cost of producing reimbursable school meals. The methods were based on approaches used in prior USDA studies.
This fact sheet describes the methods used in the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study (SNMCS) to collect, process, and analyze data on students’ dietary intakes.
This fact sheet describes the methods used in the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study (SNMCS) to collect, process, and analyze data to examine nutritional characteristics of school meals.
This factsheet describes the methods used in the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study (SNMCS) to collect, process, and analyze data to assess plate waste in the school meal programs.