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Washington, DC, October 11, 2022 The Biden-Harris administration in the present day offered $50 million in grants to varsities to put money into new meals service tools that can enable them to proceed serving nutritious meals. Right this moment’s funding is along with the $30 million in tools grants the administration awarded to varsities earlier this yr. This announcement comes as USDA aligns with companions and advocates within the youngster vitamin neighborhood to have a good time Nationwide College Lunch Week (October 10-14), a time to acknowledge the important vitamin faculty meals present to tens of hundreds of thousands of youngsters each faculty day.

The extra help for college meals and kids’s vitamin builds on the momentum of the White Home convention on starvation, vitamin and well being in latest months, through which the administration introduced a nationwide technique to finish starvation and cut back food-related illnesses by 2030.

Guaranteeing entry to nutritious faculty meals is among the finest investments we are able to make in our struggle to finish childhood starvation and enhance well being, stated Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. As we have a good time the valiant efforts of college vitamin professionals throughout the nation on this Nationwide College Lunch Week, USDA is doubling down on our efforts to assist colleges overcome challenges together with rising meals costs and the fixed disruptions within the provide chain. These extra assets will allow colleges to offer wholesome and appetizing meals whereas assembly very important foodservice tools wants.

USDA offers grant funds to states (see: State-by-State Breakdown), which use a aggressive software course of to award them to high school districts that take part within the Nationwide College Eating Program. College districts can use the funds to buy upgraded tools that can help:

• Serve more healthy meals, together with these from native sources;
• Anti-scratch kitchen implementation;
• Set up or broaden the college breakfast;
• Preservation of recent meals;
• Enhancing meals security.

Listed here are some testimonials on how tools grants have improved meals service for college districts throughout the nation:

• Higher meals preparation and visually interesting meals (Hoke County Colleges, Raeford, North Carolina) The grant offered us with the chance to buy new and up to date tools for our college kitchens. College students eat with their eyes and when the meals seems good, they eat extra. We purchased warming cupboards and helpful fridges for our center and highschool to place behind our serving traces, which helped us serve our complicated menu objects. We have now elevated our attendance at these colleges as a result of college students haven’t got to attend lengthy for his or her meals. The tools that has actually helped our program within the final two years has been the blast chillers, which permit us to shortly cool our meals. The final word aim of Hoke County Colleges is to offer all college students with the very best high quality meals menus and with this tools we’re capable of obtain this. Deborah Carpenter, govt director for youngster vitamin, Hoke County Colleges
• Sooner cooking due to the brand new dishwasher (Iowa-Grant College District, Livingston, Wisconsin) We changed a 63-year-old dishwasher with a brand new, extra environment friendly dishwasher that permits extra time to arrange meals. We have elevated the cooking to zero in our kitchen, which in flip will increase the variety of dishes we wash. We will now make issues like home made granola for breakfast and broccoli tacky soup for lunch that we by no means would have performed up to now. The brand new dishwasher is important in permitting the time and washing capability essential to proceed to extend the quantity of recent meals we prepare dinner in our kitchen. Barbara Hugill, meals service supervisor, Iowa-Grant Excessive College
• Put together native merchandise with steamers (Boyne Falls Public College, Boyne Falls, Michigan) We had been in a position to make use of our funds to buy a brand new steamer for our kitchen. Since putting in, we now have been capable of supply quite a lot of domestically sourced greens in essentially the most interesting and wholesome means doable, together with beets, inexperienced beans, brussels sprouts! The youngsters had been delighted to see any such greens due to the recent and vibrant look of the greens. Plus, it is a a lot simpler and extra environment friendly course of as a result of we do not have to blanch greens in giant, heavy pots of boiling water and switch them to the kitchen. It was a course of that would take as much as an hour; now we’re getting higher ends in ten minutes! On the finish of the day, we now have to arrange in giant batches with little manpower. This gear match the invoice completely and we’re grateful for it. Nathan Bates, prepare dinner, Boyne Falls public faculty

These grants are simply the most recent in a collection of efforts the Biden-Harris administration has undertaken to financially help faculty meals and guarantee our nations’ kids are nutritionally safe. Final month, the USDA launched the primary section of a $100 million Wholesome Meals Incentive Initiative, which can award grants to small and rural colleges to enhance the standard of their meals. Functions are open to all non-governmental organizations via November 28, 2022. Later this yr, FNS will announce the second and last section of its initiative that can broaden nutritious meals choices for college meals via partnerships with accomplice of the meals trade.

This is a snapshot of the investments USDA has made in class meals for the 2022-2023 faculty yr.

The administration can be investing in youngster vitamin extra broadly. Final month, USDA issued a last rule enhancing kids’s entry to the USDA’s summer time meals service program via streamlining and strengthening program operations. The USDA additionally permitted households of practically 33 million kids to obtain summer time youngster meals subsidies of $391 per youngster for summer time 2022, with greater quantities in Alaska, Hawaii and the U.S. territories. These advantages via the Summer time P-EBT program are serving to households cowl meals prices from the summer time months when colleges had been closed.

This announcement is a part of the Biden-Harris administration’s nationwide technique on starvation, vitamin and well being. The nationwide technique offers a roadmap of actions the federal authorities will take to finish starvation and cut back food-related illness by 2030, all whereas decreasing inequality. The nationwide technique was launched along side the primary White Home convention on starvation, vitamin and well being in additional than 50 years, hosted by President Biden on Sept. 28, 2022.

The USDA touches the lives of all Individuals every single day in so many optimistic methods. Underneath the Biden-Harris administration, USDA is remodeling the American meals system with an elevated deal with extra resilient native and regional meals manufacturing, selling competitors and fairer markets for all producers, making certain entry to protected meals , wholesome and nutritious in all communities, constructing new markets and earnings streams for farmers and producers utilizing climate-friendly meals and forestry practices, making historic investments in clear vitality infrastructure and capability in rural America, and committing to fairness throughout the Division by eradicating systemic limitations and constructing a workforce that’s extra consultant of America. To be taught extra, go to www.usda.gov.

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The USDA is an equal alternative provider, employer and lender.