School Lunch Week Tips and Resources for Improving Childrens' Nutrition Together

This week is National School Lunch Week, the School Nutrition Association's theme is “School Lunch: Let’s Grow Healthy.”

Today is 'National Take your Parents to Lunch Day' -"It’s your chance to line up with a lunch tray, eat with your child, and talk to the people who serve up the food day in and day out. National Take Your Parents to Lunch Day is about communication—talking to your school and to your child to learn about what’s going well, and how you can work together to make school food even better." Read more

Check and see if your child's school is participating, if not you can start planning for next year by sharing information about the event with your school and local PTA. My Healthy School and Kiwi Magazine have great resources and toolkits to get started.

Dietitian Online has a page dedicated to National School Lunch Week, with information on the history of the School Nutrition program and this video

School nutrition professionals, parents, advocates and communities have been working hard and coming together to improve children's nutrition at school. The USDA's paper "Highlights School Nutrition Advances During National School Lunch Week" .Progress is being made but there is still more work that needs to be done,  check out our resources to see how you can get involved in your local school community.

• Twenty states and Washington, D.C. have stricter standards than the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Seven years ago, only four states had school meal standards that were stricter than USDA requirements.

• Twenty-six states and Washington, D.C. currently have established farm-to-school programs.  Five years ago only New York had a law that established a farm-to-school program.

• There is discussion of increasing physical activity in schools. Right now, only a quarter of teenagers in public school are required to take any PE at all. Read more

Information and Resources for Healthy School Lunches for Children:

School Nutrition Association

Find your local Farm to School Program

One Tray Nourishing the Nation one Tray at a Time

Vote in Jamie Oliver's Best and Worst School Lunch Contest

USDA application to apply for free or reduced school lunch programs

Dietitian Online Nutrition news blogg, video and visuals supporting healthy nutrition

Fed up with Lunch post about Take your Parents to Lunch Day and her NEW Book "Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches --And How We Can Change Them"

Teach kids about creating healthy balanced meals with our FUN My Plate Printable Activities

My Plate Printables -English | My Plate Printables- Spanish

You may also be interested in:

The New USDA Nutrition Guidelines for School Lunches

Healthy Lunch Notes Printables- tuck one in with your child's lunch money or lunch box, for a fun reminder to eat healthy and write a personalized note on the back! We have free printable lunch notes in many themes including Halloween lunch notes! (PDFs with 6 notes to each page)