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Child and Adult Care Food Program

通过儿童和成人护理食品计划（CACFP）提供膳食和零食的幼儿中心在通过提供营养丰富的食品和饮料来支持儿童的健康，健康和开发。幼儿提供者是独特的，以帮助灌输幼儿的健康习惯，这些幼儿可以作为生活中健康选择的基础。

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.

为了获得报销，膳食和零食必须包括某些情况餐组件. 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膳食模式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.

• Nutrition_1.MenuPlanning_L1.InfantMealPattern [Exercises & Resources – CACFP Infant Meal Pattern]
• nutrition_1.menuplanning_l2.childmealpattern [练习与资源 - Cacfp儿童膳食模式]

You may also want to review the four-page PDF from the USDA Food and Nutrition Service,Serving School Meals to Preschoolers: School Year 2018-2019located athttps://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/tn/ServingPreschoolers_Final.pdfwhich offers guidance around differences between preschool and kindergarten meal patterns, and feeding preschool children in mixed age settings.

更新CACFP

In April 2016, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service published the final rule“Child and Adult Care Food Program: Meal Pattern Revisions Related to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act”in the Federal Register to update CACFP meal patterns in accordance with theHealthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. 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.

以下是影响每个食物组CACFP的关键更新的摘要：

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

• Summary of Updated CACFP Meal Patterns: Infant Meals
• Summary of Updated CACFP Meal Patterns: Child and Adult Meals
• CACFP Meal Pattern Revision: Best Practices

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.

基本菜单规划原则包括：

1. Strive for balance.菜单应该平衡蛋白质，碳水化合物，纤维，维生素和脂肪和钠和钠等重要营养素。菜单也应该平衡口味，以便菜单不太辛辣或太平淡无奇。
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.当他们允许鼓励消费时，食物应该看起来邀请和诱惑。

Planning Cycle Menus in Child Care Settings

Some child care facilities choose to usecycle 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.

有很多好处在ch使用循环菜单ild 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.
• 当我之前的实验板减少浪费nus 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.

• NFSMI Care Connection: Planning Cycle Menus for Child Care

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 DoCycle Menus在国防部儿童保育设施看起来像？

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五个星期春天循环菜单. 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.

• 五个星期春天循环菜单

What DoStandardized Recipes在国防部儿童保育设施看起来像？

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 (seehttps://www.fns.usda.gov/usda-ordardized-recipe.）。此外，国防部有一套标准化的食谱，用于儿童保育中心。这些配方含有所需的成分，批量烹饪，准备方向和有关配方的营养信息所需的量。使用国防部的烧烤猪肉和凉拌卷心菜的猪肉猪肉。您注意到的食谱有哪些功能？食谱的布局是否易于阅读和理解？

• Barbeque Pulled Pork recipe
• Coleslaw recipe

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

Menu Planning for Success

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Note that we host a vast number of cycle menus and production resources at//www.szvsi.com/food-service-materialsincluding 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新的CACFP膳食模式自我评估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.

• 新的CACFP膳食模式自我评估

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课程指南.

请注意，每个课程结束时的引用和资源部分概述了参考源和资源，以查找有关所涵盖主题的其他信息。当您完成课程时，您预计不会审查所有可用的在线参考。但是，欢迎您进一步探索资源，如果您有兴趣或培训师，教练或管理员的要求进一步探索资源。