Ingredients for Healthy School Kids

Thanks to your support, the Chef Ann Foundation and Lunch Box websites provide the necessary ingredients that schools need to serve students delicious scratch-cooked meals made with healthy, whole, nutrient-rich food. CAF provides professional training and technical support to school service staff along with grants to implement cook-from-scratch operations, salad bar programs, and nutrition education activities. These are REAL tools for REAL change. They can help school districts stay in budget while meeting the USDA guidelines. 

Some game-changing resources include:

•  Project Produce: Currently accepting applicaitons is one grant program called Project Produce, which is designed to engage kids of all ages with eating and learning about fruits and veggies, so that foods like broccoli, beets, or black beans end up in their bellies, not the trash.The grant provides $2,500 for schools to purchase fruits and veggies that will be used as part of a school-wide nutrition education activity. These activities allow kids to try new things, which helps them expand their palates and develop healthy eating habits that will stick with them through childhood and beyond. 

• Nutrition Education: Not only do we offer the fruit and veggie grant, we also have comprehensive how-to guides for many nutrition education activities on The Lunch Box. Whether it’s a simple Tasting, or a more creative idea like a Rainbow Day, a Chef Demo, or even a Junior Chef Competition, The Lunch Box has all the information and tools schools need to plan a successful event. 

• Recipes and Menus: a recipe database with hundreds of recipes that can be sized up or down depending on how many students are served. They include nutritional analysis, and they’ve all been kid-tested so school food staff can be confident that students will like them.  They sync with the menu cycles offered, which include USDA certification documentation.

• Procurement: a complete menu of procurement tools to help school food service staff transition to fresh foods and scratch-cooking while maximizing their food dollars along the way.

• The Parent Advocacy Toolkit: a detailed step-by-step guide to help parents kick start grassroots change in their districts

In the past year, CAF has ensured that over 382,000 children have access to fresh, nutritious, healthy school meals. In 2016, CAF we hope to reach 393,750 additional children with programs that ensure they have daily access to scratch-cooked meals made with fresh fruits and vegetables, healthy whole grains, and lean proteins.

You can stay up to date on all of the Chef Ann Foundation's programs and projects by signing up for our newsletters.

Thank you again for helping CAF to nourish the futures of our nation’s school children. 

Yours in the School Food Fight,

Emily Miller

Links:

• Chef Ann Foundation website