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USDA Celebrates New School Meals Options as New School Year Begins

Department applauds states and schools serving free meals to all students

WASHINGTON, August 29, 2024 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture today joined the U.S. Department of Education along with education, parent, and school meal partner organizations to host a virtual pep rally to celebrate the back-to-school season and thank the champions that educate and nourish our nation’s school children. The pep rally highlighted key steps the Biden-Harris Administration has taken to support school meals and nutrition as a key educational tool that kids need to be successful in the classroom.

“Healthy school meals are an essential part of the educational environment and fuel children to learn, grow and thrive,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “USDA is fully committed to setting kids up for success and this rally gives us the opportunity to come together and encourage one another to raise the bar for school meals in this new school year and beyond. We’re grateful to our partners at the Department of Education, along with all the schools, districts, states, and industry who care so much about the connection between healthy meals and our children’s futures, and we’re excited to continue to work together to make this back-to-school season a success.

“As someone who’s been a teacher and a school principal, I’ve seen how hard our school nutrition professionals work every day – and I’ve seen the incredible difference it makes when a student comes to class after a healthy meal, energized, with a smile on their face, ready to learn,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, “This rally is a reminder: school is not just a place where students go to learn reading and math. At its best, a school is a hub of the community, and one of the first places that a student and their family can get their most basic needs met.”

Earlier this year, USDA announced updated nutrition standards, which include changes that provide schools more options to successfully plan and prepare healthy meals. K-12 schools serve nutritious meals to about 30 million children every school day and these meals are an important source of nutrition for many children.

What’s New: Tastier, Healthier Options for Schools

Beginning this school year, schools have more options to:

  • Serve protein-rich breakfast foods such as yogurt, tofu, eggs, nuts and seeds, which can help them offer less sugary foods, while also supporting vegetarian diets and other food preferences.
  • Buy local foods. Schools can require unprocessed agricultural products to be locally grown, raised or caught when making purchases for school meal programs. More information about these new options is available on the Procuring Local Foods webpage.

Learn about how some school districts are already cutting down on added sugars and bringing more local foods into the cafeteria, with support from USDA:

Regional School Unit (RSU) #89, Maine

“We are no longer offering breakfast bars that had so much sugar in them. Our lunches feature either USDA meats or meats from our local butcher. We also use vegetables, eggs, potatoes, and fresh sausages and bacon from local farms. We are constantly trying to reduce sugar and sodium in all our foods and use more local foods.” – Denise Tapley Proctor, food service director

Visit this video blog to learn more about RSU #89’s strategies for improving their school meals.

Thornton Fractional High School District (HSD) #215, Illinois

“We have started to revamp our breakfast menu by removing sugary cereal items and adding more protein breakfast items. We have added yogurt parfaits, overnight oats, egg bites and boiled eggs to our breakfast charcuterie.” – Phylicia Burford, director of food services

Visit this video blog to learn more about Thornton Fractional HSD #215’s strategies for improving their school meals.

Both RSU #89 and Thornton HSD #215 received USDA Healthy Meals Incentives grants to improve their school meal operations — part of the largest targeted investment USDA has ever made for school meal programs in small and- rural communities — and have been recognized for their progress. USDA, in partnership with Action for Healthy Kids, also provides grants, technical assistance and shares innovative ideas and practices through the $100 million initiative. To learn more about other award-winning school districts, please visit the HMI Awardee Spotlight webpage.

Healthy School Meals for All

Advancing a pathway to free healthy school meals for all is a priority set forth in the Biden-Harris Administration’s White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health.

Eight states have taken permanent actions to provide healthy school meals at no cost to all their students: California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont.

Meanwhile, in other states, many schools in high-need areas provide free meals to all their students through the Community Eligibility Provision, commonly known as CEP. Last year, USDA gave an estimated 3,000 more school districts the option to serve breakfast and lunch to all students at no cost, by expanding the availability of CEP.

Next Steps in Strengthening School Meals

School meals will also be strengthened in upcoming years through gradual reductions to added sugars and sodium. For information about how these updates will be implemented, see this video:

Support for Healthy Kids

USDA is committed to helping kids lead healthy lives. The Department has taken several actions to bolster the programs that provide critical nutrition to infants and children.

Through a variety of programs and initiatives, USDA has provided nearly $13.7 billion in financial support to schools across the country since January 2021. Some investments that USDA has made in school meals this year include:

  • Awarding a record-breaking $14.3 million in Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grants to 154 projects in 43 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico. These investments will help 1.9 million children eat more tasty, nutritious foods in school, while supporting farmers and producers in their local and regional communities.
  • Awarding nearly $16.5 million in Healthy Meals Incentives grants to spark innovation in the school meals marketplace by incentivizing collaboration between schools, the food industry and other stakeholders. Learn about the grant recipients here.
  • Providing $10 million in grants for schools to invest in new food service equipment that will enable them to continue serving nutritious meals.
  • Opened applications to award a $600,000 cooperative agreement for an organization to provide trainings that will improve food safety knowledge and communications for school nutrition professionals.

Additional Resources

USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate-smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov.

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