It’s School Lunch Week!

Gov. Dennis Daugaard has declared the week of Oct. 14 – 20, 2012, as School Lunch Week in South Dakota. This is to recognize the daily work of more than 1,000 school nutrition program employees who provide healthy school meals to South Dakota students daily.

Serving more than 31 million children nationally every school day, the federally funded National School Lunch Program provides nutritionally balanced, healthy meals. The program, which has been around for more than 60 years, requires school meals to meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new nutrition standards by:

• Ensuring students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week;
• Substantially increasing offerings of whole grain-rich foods;
• Offering only fat-free or low-fat milk varieties;
• Limiting calories based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size; and
• Increasing the focus on reducing the amounts of saturated fat, trans fats and sodium.

The theme of this year’s national school lunch celebration is “School Lunch – What’s Cooking?”