Maryann Durrant (USBE):
This video will go through four of the five meal components in detail. We’ll discuss meat/meat alternates, vegetables, fruit, and milk. Grains/bread will be discussed in a separate training.
Some examples of meat/meat alternates on the program are beef, poultry, fish, eggs, cheese, yogurt, beans, peanut butter, etc. If your center decides to serve hotdogs on your cycle menus, these items should be labeled 100% meat or beef. Any hot dogs or lunch meats that include byproducts, cereals, binders or extenders would not be creditable unless you have a special label called a CN label.
You would be able to credit yogurt and tofu as meat or meat alternates on the food program, although there are some additional guidelines in order to claim them. For tofu, you would need to serve a commercially prepared tofu that contains at least 5 grams of protein per 2.2 ounces. You would need to serve 2.2 oz to credit as 1 oz of meat/meat alternate. If you choose to serve tofu, you would probably want to serve an additional meat/meat alternate to meet the serving size requirement, otherwise you would end up serving a lot of tofu.
A quick note about nut/seed butters. You would absolutely be able to credit these as a meat/meat alternate, but you’ll want to check to make sure that it’s actually a nut or seed butter. A spread such as Nutella might look like a nut butter, but since it’s mostly oil and sugar, it would not qualify as a meat/meat alternate. Also, with these nut/seed butters, you would have to serve quite a lot to meet the serving size for lunch. If you’re serving a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, you would need to make sure that you’re either serving the full amount of peanut butter (which ends up being 4 tablespoons for the 6-12 year olds) or else serve an additional meat/meat alternate to meet the serving size requirement.
Cheese served on the food program can be either natural or processed. It’s not recommended to serve “cheese spread” or “cheese food” to children on the food program because these items must be doubled in order to meet the meal pattern requirements. “Imitation cheese” or “cheese product” are not able to be credited on the food program. If you serve canned cheese sauce, it would require a child nutrition label. Products would be labeled as either cheese, cheese spread, or imitation cheese, so make sure that you check the label before purchasing and serving the item. We have seen instances where sponsors were serving individual wrapped cheese slices that were labeled as a cheese product. They hadn’t looked closely enough at the product when purchasing it.
Next on to the vegetable component. The vegetables you serve can be fresh, frozen or canned. We’d encourage you to serve fresh or frozen over canned when possible. If you serve canned vegetables we encourage you to look at the label and purchase items that don’t have high levels of sodium.
As with vegetables, the fruit that you serve can be fresh, frozen or canned. If you’re serving canned fruit, try to find varieties that aren’t canned in heavy syrup as those contain a lot of added sugar. Again, as with vegetables, commercially prepared mixed fruit would only count as one fruit component. If you choose to serve juice, it must be 100% juice and may only be served in place of the fruit or vegetable component 1 time each day. That being said, we do not recommend serving juice on a regular basis, due to the high sugar content. While 100% juice is all natural sugar, which is better than added sugar, it can still be a strong contributor to cavities and have a negative impact on the health of the children in your care. It’s also important to help children develop a taste for water when they’re young. It’s a requirement that you have water available to the children in your care, please encourage the children to drink water.
Now, moving on to the 5th component. Milk must be pasteurized fluid milk, milk that is used in recipes cannot be counted towards the minimum portion size requirements on the food chart. Milk is required for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Children 2 years and older on the food program must be served 1% or skim milk, 1 year olds must receive whole milk. There is a one month transition period allowed for children who have turned two and are switching to 1% or skim milk. During that one month transition time, you are able to serve whole milk, 2%, 1% or skim to help ease their transition.
You can see the top table describes what we just talked about. 1 year olds must receive whole milk, 2 years and up receive skim or 1%. Now let’s talk about flavored milk. That means chocolate, strawberry, vanilla, etc. Any milk that has flavoring added. Flavored milk is not creditable for children aged 1-5. You can serve and credit flavored milk it to children ages 6 and up. As with the unflavored milk, it must be skim or 1%.
The flavored milk rule applies to milk equivalents as well. For example, if a 2 year old is receiving a soy based beverage, it would have to be unflavored, it couldn’t be vanilla or chocolate flavored. In addition, you’re not able to serve regular milk and then add in a chocolate/strawberry syrup or powder for 1-5 year olds.
Also, milk and juice cannot be credited together during a snack. You need to specify the type of milk that is being served to children in your care, for example you can see that this record specifies that 1 year olds received whole milk and those 2 and above received 1%. You would need to notate if you served flavored milk as well. This documentation can be on production records, detailed menu records, posted menus, or on other menu documentation.
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