When you "Dig In to School Breakfast," you can find a lot to love - for your school food service program, for students and for teachers. National School Breakfast Week, March 6-10, is the perfect opportunity to highlight all there is to love about school breakfast.
School Breakfast is Easy
What could be easier for parents than for their kids to grab a breakfast bag on their way to their classroom each morning? No breakfast prep, mess or dishes. Less groceries to buy. And CKC's breakfast bags also simplify meal prep and service for school food service staff too. There's little to prep and little to clean.
School Breakfast is Nutritious
The USDA nutritional guidelines for school breakfast ensures students are getting a solid nutritional start to the day. Schools must offer students a breakfast that includes a full cup of fruits or vegetables, whole-grain-rich (at least 50% whole grains) items and milk. Students are required to take at least one half-cup serving of fruits or vegetables with every school breakfast. Additionally, there are limits by age category for overall calories a breakfast may contain, which ensures foods are not high in sugar. Manufacturers have adapted their recipes over the years to meet these nutritional guidelines. Many popular consumer brands, such as Trix, Lucky Charms and Cheerios, have adapted recipes for school breakfast. Those recognizable brands are readily accepted by kids.
School Breakfast Supports Learning
Students who eat breakfast are shown to achieve higher levels in reading and math, score higher on standardized tests, have better concentration and memory, and be more alert. With these kinds of outcomes, it just makes sense for ALL students to have breakfast. It's often easy to spot the students who skipped this all-too-important meal.
School Breakfast is Affordable
With bulk purchasing power and subsidies from the federal government, schools can provide breakfast less expensively than parents can buy the same foods at a grocery store.
Leverage National School Breakfast Week
Through the whole month of March, CKC Good Food is encouraging our client schools that offer school breakfast to grow their breakfast participation. We'll be rolling out new breakfast items that kids will love, offering incentives when schools reach incremental milestone and providing resources to help market school breakfast.
From March 6-10, National School Breakfast Week, schools can also leverage ideas and free resources available on the School Nutrition Association website. Some of the resources you can tap into include:
a customizable media release to let local media know that your school is celebrating School Breakfast Week.
“Menu planning, reporting, food safety issues, record keeping – it was really the equivalent of a full-time position. I’d say we save a minimum of 40 hours a week using CKC.”
