Here’s a link to the USDA News Release about the Child Nutrition Act and what’s been added to it. The list looks promising. It includes:
Improve nutrition standards. Establishing improved nutrition standards for school meals based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and taking additional steps to ensure compliance with these standards;
Increase access to meal programs. Providing tools to increase participation in the school nutrition programs, streamline applications, and eliminate gap periods;
Increase education about healthy eating. Providing parents and students better information about school nutrition and meal quality;
Establish standards for competitive foods sold in schools. Creating national baseline standards for all foods sold in elementary, middle, and high schools to ensure they contribute effectively to a healthy diet;
Serve more healthy food. Promoting increased consumption of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and low- and fat-free dairy products and providing additional financial support in the form of reimbursement rate increases for schools that enhance nutrition and quality;
Increase physical activity. Strengthening school wellness policy implementation and promoting physical activity in schools;
Train people who prepare school meals. Ensuring that child nutrition professionals have the skills to serve top-quality meals that are both healthful and appealing to their student customers;
Provide schools with better equipment. Helping schools with financial assistance to purchase equipment needed to produce healthy, attractive meals.
Enhance food safety. Expanding the current requirements of the food safety program to all facilities where food is stored, prepared and served.
