It’s July 1, which means a set of school nutrition rules have gone into effect. Those include the new “Smart Snacks” rules for competitive foods, which set first-of-their-kind nutrition guidelines for every food that schools in the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs offer during the entire school day, even items that aren’t served as part of reimbursable lunches and breakfasts. As I wrote last month, those rules will be a big adjustment for some schools. Others, in states with existing school snack nutrition policies, will see less of a dramatic change.
To mark the roll-out of the rules, Education Week made an interactive quiz. Try it! Can you pick the “Smart Snack?” Click on the image below to launch the quiz.
Nutrition Advocates Will Meet to Discuss Standards
Today was also an informal deadline for what I dubbed “a historic kale summit.” The School Nutrition Association had also hoped first lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack would respond to its request for a meeting about school meal standards before July 1. It appears the organization did not get its wish.
The School Nutrition Association, which has been leading the charge for waivers for some schools from federal nutrition standards, had hoped to discuss “challenges our members face as they continue to work diligently, and in good faith, to implement the regulatory requirements of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act” with Obama and Vilsack, two of the standards’ biggest supporters. But the USDA and White House representatives will hold a meeting with several organizations, including SNA representatives, to discuss the meal standards on July 10, the organization said this morning.