Team Nutrition
	Value Meal
	What's a Healthy Diet?
	Offer Vs. Served

------------------------------------------------------------------Team Nutrition
Team Nutrition is a program created by the United States Department of Agriculture for the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program. Your school district participates in this program. The mission of Team Nutrition is to improve the health and education of children by creating innovative public and private partnerships that promote food choices for a healthful diet through the media, schools, families and the community.

Supporters of Team Nutrition share these common values:
1.	We believe that children should be empowered to make food choices that reflect the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
2.	We believe that good nutrition and physical activity are essential to children’s health and educational success.
3.	We believe that school meals that meet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans should appeal to children and taste good.
4.	We believe our programs must build upon the best science, education, communication and technical resources available.
5.	We believe that public/private partnerships are essential to reaching children to promote food choices for a healthful diet.
6.	We believe that messages to children should be age appropriate and delivered in a language they speak, through media they use, in ways that are entertaining and actively involve them in learning.
7.	We believe in focusing on positive messages regarding food choices children can make.
8.	We believe it is critical to stimulate and support action and education at the national, state, and local levels to successfully change children’s eating behaviors.

The Value Meal

The food service director in your school district will be able to help you with any questions you may have regarding the menu.

Your school lunch is value priced at one price. Students have the right to refuse items on the value meal that they do not like, but they must pay the total value price. Often, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are offered to students in place of the planned entree and the value price remains in effect for the meal.

What is a Healthy Diet? 
The following summarizes key concepts from the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, developed by the US Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, and contains the best, most up-to-date advice from nutrition scientists.

Eat a variety of foods to get the energy, protein, vitamins, and minerals, and fiber you need for good health.

Balance the food you eat with physical activity, maintain or improve your weight to reduce your chances of having high blood pressure, heart disease, a stroke, certain cancers, and the most common kind of diabetes.

Choose a diet with plenty of grain products vegetables, and fruit which are important sources of fiber, complex carbohydrates, and other food components that can help reduce your risk of some chronic diseases.

Choose a diet low in fat, saturated fat and cholesterol to reduce your risk of heart disease and certain cancers, and to help you maintain a healthy weight. Because fat contains more than twice the calories of an equal amount of carbohydrates or protein, a diet low in fat can help maintain healthy weight.

Choose a diet moderate in sugars A diet with lots of sugars often has foods with too many calories and too few nutrients and can contribute to tooth decay and overweight.

Choose a diet moderate in salt and sodium which may help reduce the risk of high blood pressure.

If you drink alcoholic beverages, do so in moderation because alcoholic beverages supply calories but little or no nutrients and in excess are harmful. Children and adolescents should not drink at all.

Unfortunately, most children do not consume a diet that meets the Dietary Guidelines outlined above. Less than one in five children eat the recommended number of servings of fruit and vegetables daily.    

Offer Vs. Served
We implement the offer versus served provision in all of our schools. This means students have the right to refuse any two of the five meal components offered daily. The provision is enabled to reduce plate waste in the meal program. Students will still pay the packaged, full meal price. Parents should encourage students to accept all components of the meal and to eat the items they select for a balanced meal plan.