USDA is asking states to pledge to make their school meals and snack programs healthier to ensure students are served nourishing foods that support lifelong healthy eating patters.
This memorandum provides guidance on the school year 2026-2027 Buy American accommodation process outlined in 7 CFR 210.21(d)(8) and 7 CFR 220.16(d)(8).
Product Formulation Statement templates and samples for demonstrating how a food product may contribute to the meal pattern requirements in USDA child nutrition programs.
The child nutrition label provides a way for a manufacturer to demonstrate how a food product may contribute to the meal pattern requirements in child nutrition programs.
This toolkit contains resources for use by food industry to understand meal pattern requirements for USDA child nutrition programs, how food products may contribute toward the meal pattern requirements, and food product documentation used in the CNP.
The term alternate protein product is the name we use to identify products meeting requirements set forth in Appendix A of the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, Summer Food Service Program, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program within the section entitled “Alternate Protein Products.”
A manufacturer’s product formulation statement is a document that demonstrates how a food product may contribute to the meal pattern requirements in USDA child nutrition programs.
The child nutrition label provides a way for a manufacturer to demonstrate how a food product may contribute to the meal pattern requirements in child nutrition programs.
We have studied school meal program operations for a long time. You can access published reports that go back to school year 1988-89. Each study in this series focuses on topics that are important to program operations at the time. Sometimes the studies also collect information about other child nutrition programs, like the Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program.
We regularly collect information about the school meal programs and how they operate from the people who know best – the state agencies that oversee the programs in each state and territory and the school food authorities that manage the programs locally in one or more schools.