{"id":27344,"date":"2021-10-14T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-14T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/celebrating-national-school-lunch-week-farm-to-school-month-with-usda-national-school-lunch-program\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T17:37:50","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T22:37:50","slug":"celebrating-national-school-lunch-week-farm-to-school-month-with-usda-national-school-lunch-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/celebrating-national-school-lunch-week-farm-to-school-month-with-usda-national-school-lunch-program\/","title":{"rendered":"USDA Celebrates National School Lunch Week + Farm to School Month"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">Since 1946, the&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fns.usda.gov\/nslp\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><span data-contrast=\"none\">National School Lunch Program<\/span><\/strong><\/a><span data-contrast=\"none\">&nbsp;has provided nutritionally balanced, low-cost or no-cost lunches in schools&nbsp;to improve&nbsp;the health and wellbeing of America\u2019s children.&nbsp;Research shows school meals may be the healthiest food children receive in a day, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.&nbsp;<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">As part of a comprehensive effort to support school meal programs facing challenges during the pandemic, Agriculture Secretary&nbsp;Tom&nbsp;Vilsack\u202f<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fns.usda.gov\/news-room\/usda-0209.21\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><span data-contrast=\"none\">announced $1.5 billion in&nbsp;assistance<\/span><\/strong><\/a><span data-contrast=\"none\">\u202fin September 2021. For the entire 2021-2022 school year, USDA is allowing schools to leverage the National School Lunch Program\u2019s \u202f<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fns.usda.gov\/sfsp\/seamless-summer-and-other-options-schools\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><span data-contrast=\"none\">Seamless Summer Option<\/span><\/strong><\/a><span data-contrast=\"none\">\u202f(SSO) to serve&nbsp;nutritious meals to&nbsp;millions of children at no cost.<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">\u201cThis National School Lunch Week, we recognize the importance of school meals to children\u2019s ability to learn and grow, and we honor the hard work and dedication of the school nutrition professionals that make those meals possible, no matter the circumstances,\u201d Vilsack said. \u201cStudents\u2019 success in the classroom depends on their ability to access healthy and nutritious meals, which is why USDA is committed to working hand-in-hand with state and local partners to ensure they have the support they need to best serve the children in their care.\u201d<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-contrast=\"none\">This&nbsp;month, USDA is&nbsp;also&nbsp;joining in the celebration of Farm to School Month, which recognizes efforts to bring local foods into&nbsp;schools.&nbsp;<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff9902;\"><strong>October is National Farm to School Month, and&nbsp;National School Lunch Week&nbsp;is being&nbsp;celebrated this year from October 11 through October 15.<\/strong><\/span><span data-contrast=\"none\">&nbsp;<\/span><span data-contrast=\"none\">To learn more, visit&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usda.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><span data-contrast=\"none\"><span style=\"color: #2da9e1;\">www.USDA.com<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/a><span data-contrast=\"none\">.&nbsp;<\/span><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-ccp-props=\"{}\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Celebrating-National-School-Lunch-Week-2.png\" alt=\"Celebrating National School Lunch Week (2)\" width=\"400\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"width: 400px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; display: block;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since 1946, the&nbsp;National School Lunch Program&nbsp;has provided nutritionally balanced, low-cost or no-cost lunches in schools&nbsp;to improve&nbsp;the health and wellbeing of America\u2019s children.&nbsp;Research shows school meals may be the healthiest food children receive in a day, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":244,"featured_media":27347,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[197,208],"class_list":["post-27344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-featured","tag-industry-news-usda-fns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/244"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27346,"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27344\/revisions\/27346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goebt.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}