Updated standards are raising the bar for nutrition to help kids grow up healthier.
School nutrition professionals continue to make school meals the healthiest meals children eat in a day! Nutritious school meals are an investment in our children’s futures, and we all share the common goal of helping them reach their full potential
This memorandum provides a detailed explanation of the expanded geographic preference option.
On April 25, 2024, FNS published the final rule, Child Nutrition Programs: Meal Patterns Consistent With the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This rule includes minor updates to the Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program to better align Child Nutrition Program requirements. These updates represent continued progress toward supporting the nutrition quality of school meals, strengthening the Child Nutrition Programs, and advancing USDA’s commitment to nutrition security.
This memorandum provides notice to child nutrition program operators regarding Sections 739, 747, 748, 769, and 770 of Division B of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024, enacted on March 9, 2024. This memorandum applies to state agencies administering, and local organizations operating, the federal CNPs.
With the revision, FNS will seek approval for the School Meals Operations (SMO) study to collect survey and administrative data about SY 2023-24 from a census of state agencies. The SMO study will not collect survey data about SY 2023-24 from school food authorities.
This data collection fulfills states’ reporting requirements and describes trends in program participation during the COVID-19 pandemic from July 2020 through Dec. 2021. It is part of an ongoing study series examining CN program operations, repurposed to collect waiver reports from all states. A previous report in the series detailed waiver usage and trends in program participation and operations from March through Sept. 2020.
This rulemaking finalizes long-term school nutrition requirements based on the goals of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025, robust stakeholder input, and lessons learned from prior rulemakings.
The final rule - Child Nutrition Programs: Revisions to Meal Patterns Consistent with the 2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans - is the next step in an ongoing effort toward healthier school meals that USDA and the broader school meals community have been partnering on for well over a decade. This table is a reference tool for stakeholders to visualize the proposed implementation timeline.
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 and advancing USDA’s commitment to nutrition security.