Great childcare centers prioritize health and safety, especially when it comes to serving food. Luckily, we’ve got you covered with the ins and outs of providing meals in childcare programs. We’ll cover national regulations, CACFP standards, and streamlining your meal service system so you can establish strong food practices in your program. 

What are daycare food regulations?

First, let's talk about the basic regulations and requirements. Food regulations include guidance on all things food in childcare centers, from nutritional standards to maintaining health and safety in handling and serving food. 

What is the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP)?

In short, the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is a federal program that helps childcare programs, after-school programs, and even adult care centers serve healthy meals with educational and financial guidance. 

If you run a childcare program, you know that costs can be extensive. CACFP can help you support the health of your students while also giving you the financial support you need to do so. 

Besides reimbursing costs, the CACFP program can also help you by ensuring the meals you offer meet specific nutritional standards, giving you guidance on meal patterns, and helping you maintain compliance with training and monitoring. 

Nutrition standards for childcare food programs

Nutritional standards can include meal components, like fruits, vegetables, grains, protein, and dairy. This way, you can balance food groups with a variety of options while hitting all the important nutrients. 

CACFP helps you offer appropriate portion sizes so you know how much of each meal component to provide for each meal and snack. This can be a big help if your program serves a wider range of ages and you’re unsure of how much and what type of food, snacks, and fluids are required for different children. 

If your center serves infants, for example, you’ll see specific guidelines on the frequency, portion size, and type of milk to provide infants for meals and snacks with each new monthly development. 

Charts like these help you identify the ages that require different portions and components for each meal of the day, including snacks. For breakfast, include fluid milk, grains, and fruits or vegetables. Lunch and supper include portions of fluid milk, grains, fruits or vegetables, and meats or meat alternatives. Snacks should contain at least two of all meal components. 

At the end of the day, food should help kids gain strength and maintain energy levels, which is why it’s a good idea to watch out for sugar content in your foods. Some foods — often cereals, yogurts, and juice — can be the sneaky culprits of an easy but unbalanced meal, leading to energy spikes and crashes. 

Balance is key. When you offer a good variety of meal components and nutrients, kids can develop strong relationships with food and improve their mental, physical, and emotional well-being. 

Important daycare kitchen requirements

Food safety requires some healthy practices, too. Tracking different foods can be tricky without smart storage practices. Make sure to properly label and store your food at safe and recommended temperatures. 

When it comes to preparing food, separating utensils and areas helps avoid cross-contamination. For example, it’s wise to have different cutting boards for fruits, vegetables, cheeses, and meats. Seafood, eggs, meats, and meat alternatives will need careful and separate storage and handling. 

Train your staff to help make sure everyone follows safety practices in food handling and hygiene. Wiping, sanitizing, and washing all items after use will help minimize risks of contamination or foodborne illnesses. Beyond training, help your staff out by keeping hand-washing and sanitizing procedures on a visible wall in the kitchen. 

You can use your instincts to help maintain cleanliness too, just to stay on the safe side. Check for odors in different foods or in cleaning supplies that are growing old and need replacing. Even refrigerators need some disinfecting and washing. 

Use Playground’s expense tracking tool to help you anticipate and track your restocking needs for cooking, eating, and cleaning utensils, including the items used by staff and the dishes used by students.  

5 daycare food program best practices to follow

When running a food program, it’s essential to follow some best practices that can ensure kids get nutritious meals. Here is a quick guide to smoothen your food process. 

Create a nutritious daycare food menu

Design meals that include a variety of fruits, veggies, grains, proteins, and dairy. Keep it balanced and age-appropriate to meet the CACFP nutrition standards. 

A balanced meal is colorful! Meals that include lots of different colors can provide rich nutrients and support healthy growth, immune functions, and overall well-being. Offering a variety of dark green, red/orange, beans, and starchy vegetables ensures a wide range of vitamins, minerals, and fiber. 

It’s been mentioned, but it’s worth mentioning again: avoid excess sugar. Daycares should avoid providing kids with sweetened drinks, including flavored milk, sweetened teas, and energy drinks. Although tempting and popular, these drinks are linked to heart disease and obesity. Stick to water and unsweetened milk to keep kids hydrated. 

A nutrient-rich menu can lead to kids reaching for healthier snacks even at home.  Your program can help kids develop healthy eating habits that promote a strong foundation for lifelong health. 

Simplify the meal recording process

Tracking so many meals, snacks, and menus can be a handful. Streamline the process with Playground’s digital tools. The software lets you quickly enter meal types and select foods for meals, so you can enter and save data in real-time and, if needed, easily edit later. Keep record-keeping easy and efficient, saving you time and keeping you compliant with CACFP requirements. 

Carefully label daycare food containers

Always label food containers with contents and dates. This helps maintain food safety and makes it easy to organize your kitchen. Proper labeling also ensures that staff can quickly identify and use ingredients before they expire. 

Regularly train staff on food safety

Make sure your team is up-to-date with food safety practices. Regular and timely is key! Ongoing education helps prevent foodborne illnesses and keeps your daycare compliant with health regulations. 

Check out our guide on staff handbook policies for more details on how to emphasize and implement health, hygiene, and food safety in your childcare center. 

Automate your CACFP reports

Save time by using software to automate your CACFP reporting. Easily track meals, programs, and reimbursements. Using Playground’s food program tools can help you ensure accuracy and frees you up to focus on other tasks. 

Playground streamlines food programs for daycare providers

Ensuring your childcare program follows best practices for food programs not only supports children’s health and development but also keeps your center running smoothly and compliantly. By creating nutritious menus, simplifying meal recording, labeling food containers, training staff on food safety, and automating your CACFP reports, you can provide high-quality care. 

Playground’s software can help streamline these processes, offering tools for meal planning, tracking, and reporting to make managing your food program easier and more efficient. Learn more to smoothen your food process.