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Child and Adult Care Food Program

Child care centers that offer meals and snacks through the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) play a critical role in supporting the wellness, health, and development of children by providing nutritious foods and beverages. Child care providers are uniquely positioned to help instill healthy habits in young children that can serve as a foundation for healthy choices in life.

CACFP provides guidelines for serving nutritious meals and snacks to infants and children who attend child care centers. A variety of public or private nonprofit child care centers, Head Start programs, outside-school-hours care centers, and other institutions that are licensed or approved to provide child care services participate in CACFP. For-profit centers that serve lower-income children may also be eligible. CACFP reimburses child care centers for meals and snacks that meet the eligibility requirements.

To qualify for reimbursement, meals and snacks must include certain meal components. Meal components align with the food groups of MyPlate. Including foods from each food group ensures children receive nutritionally adequate meals.

CACFP Meal Patterns

The CACFP has different meal pattern requirements based on the age of the child. Meal patterns specify how much of each type of meal component a child should receive in a given meal. CACFP specifies meal patterns for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. For instance, according to the CACFP child meal patterns, an example of a reimbursable breakfast meal must include foods from the milk, fruits and vegetables, and grains components, served in the portions indicated for each age group.

The updated CACFP meal patterns are below. Keep these for your office documents.

You may also want to review the four-page PDF from the USDA Food and Nutrition Service, Serving School Meals to Preschoolers: School Year 2018-2019 located at which offers guidance around differences between preschool and kindergarten meal patterns, and feeding preschool children in mixed age settings.

Updates to the CACFP

In April 2016, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service published the final rule in the Federal Register to update CACFP meal patterns in accordance with the . The new CACFP regulations define early-education age groups as infant–5 months, 6–11 months, 1–2 years, and 3–5 years.

The new CACFP meal patterns increase the consumption of vegetables, fruits and whole grains, allow for more nutritious substitutions, and reduce the consumption of added sugars and saturated fats. The updated standards also take cost and practicality into consideration. These improvements are expected to enhance the quality of meals served to young children.

Here is a summary of key updates affecting CACFP by each food group:

The resources below provide a summary of the updates to CACFP and address best practices for implementing CACFP in your facility.

Basic Principles of Menu Planning

Careful menu planning is a fundamental process for successful child care food service programs. Making an effort to plan menus saves time and money; you increase efficiency, streamline ordering, and ensure that menus are in compliance with CACFP for meal reimbursement. Menu planning also allows for nutritionally adequate, balanced meals to be served to the children in your facility.

Basic menu planning principles include:

1. Strive for balance. Menus should balance important nutrients like protein, carbohydrate, fiber, vitamins, and minerals with fat and sodium. Menus should also balance flavors so that menus are not too spicy or too bland.
2. Emphasize variety. Including a variety of foods not only helps ensure adequate nutrient intake, but also keep menus interesting and appealing. Include different forms of foods and vary how they are served from day to day.
3. Add contrast. A daily menu should offer contrasting textures, flavors, and colors. For instance, you would not want to serve a breakfast of oatmeal, applesauce, and milk to older children because they are all “soft” foods and do not include varying textures.
4. Consider color. Use combinations of colors that go well together. A good practice is to include at least two different colors in each meal.
5. Create eye appeal. Foods should look inviting and enticing when they are served to encourage consumption.

Planning Cycle Menus in Child Care Settings

Some child care facilities choose to use cycle menus, which are a set of different daily menu offerings that are served for a specified period. Once all of the menus have been served, the cycle is repeated in the same order. Cycle menus are typically set for a duration of three to five weeks, although they can be any time period. One practice is to set the cycles to be seasonal, such as fall cycle menus, winter cycle menus, etc. This allows for the ability to use seasonal foods such as fresh produce.

There are many benefits to using cycle menus in child care. For instance, using cycle menus can have positive impacts on the nutritional quality of meals, as well as offer streamlined budgeting and preparation aspects of food service.

Benefits of using cycle menus include:

• More accurate forecasting and use of staffing, equipment, and food-resource needs
• Allows for bulk ordering of ingredients, which reduces time spent on food purchasing and saves on food costs.
• Reduction in plate waste when previously-tested menus are served
• Assurance that menus meet CACFP guidelines
• Ability to offer a variety of foods that incorporate different textures, colors, and flavors
• Flexibility to modify menus to meet ordering shortages, acceptability, etc.

Getting started with planning cycle menus involves a few considerations. Think about which cycle length would work the best in your facility. You may wish to have a shorter cycle for breakfast and a longer cycle for lunch, for instance. Be sure to consider the meal pattern requirements for CACFP for the various age groups. This is done by setting the same core menu for all ages and adjusting appropriately, either by increasing portions served or by adding on meal components. Think about your kitchen’s layout, staffing, delivery schedule, and equipment when choosing which recipes to include in your menus. Lastly, consider the “flow” of meal service from breakfast through the end of the day and make sure there is sufficient variety of foods served at each main meal and at snacks.

Involving school-age children in the menu planning process is a great way to design meals that appeal to this age group. You can survey the children and ask them to vote which foods (from a selected list) they would like to see on the menu. When children have “buy-in” in the meal planning process, they are more accepting of the menu offerings served.

The National Food Service Management Institute has published a reference guide for planning cycle menus that you may wish to download.

Using Standardized Recipes

According to the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture), a standardized recipe is one that has been tried, adapted, and retried several times by a child nutrition operation and has been found to produce the same good results and yield every time when the exact procedures are followed with the same type of equipment and the same quantity and quality of ingredients.

Since standardized recipes are prepared the same way each time, using them can streamline food and labor costs.

There are myriad benefits to using standardized recipes in your child care facility, including consistent quality, yield, and nutrient content of meals prepared. From a management standpoint, using standardized recipes helps with controlling food and labor costs, inventory, and purchasing. The information provided in a standardized recipe can be used for record-keeping purposes and the CACFP reimbursement process. Be sure to check with your supervisor to determine what requirements your program has regarding menu approval. For example, some programs require that a nutritionist approve menus before they are released.

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What Do Cycle Menus at Department of Defense Child Care Facilities Look Like?

Different child care facilities have different menus. All menus must incorporate a variety of nutritious foods in portions that meet the CACFP requirements for children at each age group. Look over the information in the following example of a Five Week Spring Cycle Menu. What kinds of foods are included? Is there a good variety? Are the items seasonally appropriate? How might these cycle menus help streamline the meal-planning process? Keep the cycle menu handy as you will refer to it later on in this lesson.

What Do Standardized Recipes in Department of Defense Child Care Facilities Look Like?

There are plenty of recipe resources available to child care food service staff that are CACFP-compliant, kid-tested, budget-friendly, and still offer a variety of flavors, textures, and colors. USDA offers some standardized recipes (see ). In addition, the Department of Defense has a set of standardized recipes for use at child care centers. These recipes contain the ingredients required, the amounts needed for batch cooking, the preparation directions, and nutrition information about the recipe. Use the Department of Defense recipe for Barbeque Pulled Pork on a Roll and Coleslaw. What are some features of the recipes that you notice? Is the layout of the recipes easy to read and understand?

See the following video for more information on successful menu planning.

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Note that we host a vast number of cycle menus and production resources at /food-service-materials including bundles for Fall/Winter, Spring, Summer, and field trips. The bundles include cycle menus, inventory and ordering calculators and nutrition macros, and recipes.

Is Your Facility Compliant with the New CACFP Updates?

Complete the following New CACFP Meal Pattern Self-Assessment to see how your program complies with the new standards and what additional items must be addressed in order to meet the new standards. Discuss your findings with your trainer, coach or administrator.

Completing this Course

For more information on what to expect in this course, and a list of the accompanying Learn, Explore, and Apply resources and activities offered throughout the lessons, visit the Focused Topics Essentials in Child Care Food Service Course Guide.

Please note the References & Resources section at the end of each lesson outlines reference sources and resources to find additional information on the topics covered. As you complete lessons, you are not expected to review all the online references available. However, you are welcome to explore the resources further if you have interest, or at the request of your trainer, coach, or administrator.