Healthy food school programs

Updated nutrition standards have significantly improved the nutritional quality of school lunches and breakfasts. J Acad Nutr Diet. Healthy Youth.

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Linking to a non-federal website does not constitute an endorsement by CDC or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the website. This provides flexibility allowing schools to use strategies that work with their settings, daily schedule, and resources. Nutrition education can take place in the classroom, either through a stand-alone health education class or combined into other subjects including 2,5 :.

Nutrition education should align with the National Health Education Standards and incorporate the characteristics of an effective health education curriculum. Farm-to-school programs vary in each school or district, but often include one or more of the following strategies:.

Students who participate in farm-to-school activities have increased knowledge about nutrition and agriculture, are more willing to try new foods, and consume more fruits and vegetables. Schools may have window sill gardens, raised beds, greenhouses, or planted fields. Students can prepare the soil for the garden, plant seeds, harvest the fruits and vegetables, and taste the food from the garden.

Produce from school gardens can be incorporated into school meals or taste tests. Classroom teachers can teach lessons in math, science, history, and language arts using the school garden. Cafeterias are learning labs where students are exposed to new foods through the school meal program, see what balanced meals look like, and may be encouraged to try new foods through verbal prompts from school nutrition staff, 23 or taste tests.

These strategies can help reinforce messages about good nutrition and help ensure that students see and hear consistent information about healthy eating across the school campus and at home.

Dietary Guidelines for Americans, — external icon. Introduction to School Gardens pdf icon external icon. Learning Through the Garden external icon. National Farm-to-School Network external icon. National Health Education Standards.

Team Nutrition Curricula external icon. Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. CDC Healthy Schools. As a result, much of our national food policy work focuses on making sure that often-unheard student voices are part of this debate. We do this work through Cooking up Change, a competition for high school culinary students challenging them to create a healthy school meal that their peers will enjoy. Their culinary creations are proof positive that healthy school meals can taste great and appeal to students.

At the state level, HSC advocates for policy in Illinois to support healthy school food. As at the national level, we also work to elevate student voices in the state policy dialogue about healthy school food through Cooking up Change.

For example, the winning student chefs from Cooking up Change Chicago each year present their meal to the Illinois State Board of Education and share their perspective on the value of healthy school food. In particular, we are motivated by a vision for school food centered on ten interconnected pathways which are critical to the success of school food programs.

We developed these pathways through our work with parent and stakeholder school food advisory groups we co-convened with Chicago Public Schools.

Read more about the pathways and our work for school food in Chicago. In addition to our work in Chicago, we provide tools and resources to support parents and other advocates in making change in their own communities.

See our Resource Center for more. Your voice is especially vital as we approach a moment of risk and opportunity for national school food policy. As the administration proposes new rules that roll back progress and Congress gears up to reauthorize the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, your voice is more important than ever. You can raise your voice in support of healthy school food policy by urging your elected leaders to maintain the recent progress supporting healthy food and healthy students.

An excellent starting point is the National Association of State Boards of Education State School Health Policy Database , which includes state-level detail about policies focused on school meals, competitive foods, wellness policies and more. For highlights of successful strategies used by state agency leaders to promote healthy school food, see Promising Practices of State Child Nutrition Programs.

We encourage you to speak with leaders at your school to understand their school food challenges and opportunities, talk with parents about what they see, and learn about any advocacy organizations who may be working on this issue in your state. Based on this information, you can identify the most practical approach to creating change. Many key policy decisions about school food are made at the local district and school levels.

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