Give Children Information They Need to Make Healthy Food Choices – Now and for Life
Nutrition Requirements

The United States government initiated school meals programs in 1946 to “safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation's children.” Schools must serve meals that are consistent with Dietary Guidelines for Americans which, most recently, include: “eat a variety of foods; choose a diet with plenty of grain products, vegetables and fruits; choose a diet moderate in sugars and salt; and choose a diet with 30% or less calories from fat and less than 10% calories from saturated fat.”

Menus meet requirements and minimum quantities established by the United States Department of Agriculture under the Traditional Food-Based Daily Menu Pattern:

Breakfast
Lunch
½ pt Milk
½ pt Milk
½ c Fruit or Juice
1 serving Bread/Grain (8 per week)
2 servings Bread/Grains
OR
2 oz equivalent Meat/Protein
OR
1 serving Bread/Grain and
1 oz equivalent Meat/Protein
2 oz equivalent Meat/Protein

2 servings (minimum ¾ c total)

Fruit/Vegetables

Elgin School District lunch menus are planned to include more than the required amount of fruits/vegetables. Students must select at least 3 components to be eligible for the reimbursable meal price. For example, a bagel (equivalent to 2 bread servings) and ½ pt milk can qualify as a breakfast meal; a hamburger (2 oz meat/protein, 1 bread) and ½ pt milk can qualify as a lunch meal.

The meal patterns have been designed to contribute, at a minimum, ¼ of the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) for breakfast and 1/3 of the RDA for school-age children. The Food and Nutrition Services analyzes and evaluates menus for each day in order to ensure that the USDA guidelines and RDAs are met.

Healthy Meals

  • School meals are healthy meals. School lunches must meet federal guidelines based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans . The current guidelines recommend that no more than 30 percent of an individual's calories come from fat, and less than 10 percent from saturated fat. Regulations also establish a standard for school lunches to provide one-third of the Recommended Dietary Allowances of protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron, calcium, and calories. 
  • Through the National School Lunch Program, children consume twice the servings of fruits and vegetables and greater amounts of grains and dairy than children who eat lunch brought from home or who leave school to eat lunch. Recent research at Eastern Michigan University concluded that students who eat school lunches consume 29% less calories from fat and twice as many servings of fruits and vegetables than students who eat a bag lunch.
  • No super-sizing here. The meals served as part of the NSLP are provided in age-appropriate serving sizes – making schools one of the last places in the U.S. where you can purchase a meal with the recommended serving sizes.
  • Milk and other dairy products provide 72% of the calcium in our nation's food supply.  Schools serve milk, and offer low-fat milk because children need calcium. Studies show that children who do not eat a school lunch have lower calcium intakes for the day. According to CDC statistics, nine out of 10 girls and seven out of 10 boys (ages 12-19) currently fail to meet the recommended daily amount of calcium of 1,300 mg per day, or the equivalent of about four 8-ounce glasses of milk. Because each school meal must have a serving of milk included, schools collectively provide over 36 million servings of milk a day – that's 288 million ounces of milk.

Students are Flunking Healthy Eating

  • Only two percent of youth meet all the recommendations of the Food Guide Pyramid; 16 percent do not meet any of the recommendations.
  • Less than 15 percent of school children eat the recommended servings of fruit, less than 20 percent eat the recommended servings of vegetables, less than 25 percent eat the recommended servings of grains, and only 30 percent consume the recommended milk group servings on any given day.
  • Only 16 percent of school children meet the guideline for saturated fat on any given day.
  • Teenagers today drink twice as much carbonated soda as milk and only 19 percent of girls ages 9 to 19 meet the recommended intakes for calcium.
  • About 12 percent of students report skipping breakfast. Only 11 percent report eating a breakfast that contains foods from three food groups and food energy intakes greater than 25 percent of the Recommended Dietary Allowance. The likelihood of eating breakfast declines with the age of the student.