Nutrition Education Resources

Ronald E. Kleinman, M.D., chief of the pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital and professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, talks about why kids need breakfast every day.

This resource, from Wyoming’s Action for Healthy Kids, is a fact sheet on breakfast with tips for helping get a breakfast program started in a school.

Want your students to be more alert, focused and ready to tackle the day's academic challenges? Encourage them to eat breakfast. Not just on test days, but every day of the year. It's well-documented that breakfast eaters are healthier and more energetic throughout the day.

Here are answers to questions that initially make teachers hesitant about supporting Breakfast in the Classroom, Grab 'n' Go Breakfast, or Breakfast after 1st Period.

This resource from the National Dairy Council includes fact sheets, research abstracts, and other resources to help key audiences understand the benefits of breakfast outside the cafeteria.

These Expanding Breakfast Champion Case Histories provide descriptions of successful programs for Breakfast in the Classroom and other breakfast programs. They also make excellent, credible endorsements that can help convince principals, administration, teachers and foodservice staff that Expanding Breakfast is valuable and doable.

Use these Expanding Breakfast Reproducible Fact Sheets to target various audiences that are important to reach when implementing an Expanding Breakfast program! Each fact sheet comes with an instructional sheet on how it could be used.

Answers to frequently asked questions about Expanding Breakfast.

SNA members can now order this updated video separately without purchasing the entire Expanding Breakfast kit. This 7:35 minute companion video shows how breakfast can increase profits while directly boosting student performance.

The Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) is the leading national organization working for more effective public and private policies to eradicate domestic hunger and undernutrition. This report analyzes school breakfast participation for the 2009–2010 school year.

This resource from Action for Healthy Kids describes challenges to improving kids’ selections of healthy foods, from media influence to access to the importance of parent involvement, and provides tips on improving student understanding of its importance through student promotions and more.

This memo from the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service provides guidelines and key consideration for implementing salad bar service in a school lunch program.

It takes a real balancing act for a bagged lunch to equal the same nutrient package provided in a school lunch. Studies show that children who eat school lunch have higher nutrient intakes - both at lunch and over the course of an entire day. This is great news, because when children are better nourished, they perform better in school. From children to parents to teachers, everyone benefits from a nutritious school lunch.

This Fuel Up to Play 60 Toolkit from School Nutrition Association and National Dairy Council can help increase participation in breakfast and lunch programs; build strong relationships with students, P.E. teachers and principals; earn CEUs for SNA credentialing and certification; and more!

This resource highlights some simple, fun activities school nutrition professionals can use to help get Fuel Up to Play 60 working in schools.

This case study from Smarter Lunchrooms gives quick, low cost ideas for increasing consumption of nutrient-rich options over less healthy choices made by students pressed for time during lunch.

This resource from the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University offers quick and easy suggestions for making subtle changes to the cafeteria--via menu options, food placement, staff interaction with students and more--each of which has research-demonstrated results with positive outcomes.

This short article from Smarter Lunchrooms gives quick, low cost ideas for increasing consumption of nutrient-rich options through increasing the variety--or perceived variety--of choices available, as would be done by installing a salad bar, smoothie bar, or other [food] bar offering varieties of healthy options.