Nutrition Education Resources

This resource incorporates research, lessons, activities, and a host of online resources to help people learn about agriculture. There are sections for teachers and students, with links to many other online materials.

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 website is a partnership between leading health, education and wellness organizations, including the NAESP and the School Nutrition Association. It provides the rationale for Breakfast in the Classroom and media highlights from school districts that have successfully implemented it. It also includes a rich Breakfast in the Classroom Resource Center that can help schools and district in all aspects of trying to implement a program of this type.

This collection of consumer-tested messages and communication tools is from the USDA Food and Nutrition Service. These tested messages complement existing messages and the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Designed specifically for populations served by WIC, SNAP, Child Nutrition and other Federal nutrition assistance programs, the messages can help nutrition educators deliver consistent messages that resonate with moms and kids and motivate them to adopt healthier eating habits.

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.

This simple meal plan from the National Dairy Council provides a realistic way to get the most nutrition for your calories by focusing on nutrient-dense foods and beverages.

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 USDA's Team Nutrition is a garden-themed nutrition education kit for child care center staff that introduces children to a variety of fruits and vegetables. The booklets, which also include home activity ideas, can be ordered through Team Nutrition or downloaded from the site in .pdf format.

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 poster, available by order from USDA's Team Nutrition program, highlights the concept of making half your plate fruits and vegetables with colorful photographs of the Recipes for Healthy Kids competition winning meals.

While this guide from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics was developed to support National Nutrition Month in 2012, the resources and ideas in it are pertinent to nutrition education at any time of year. The guide is a cross-curricular collection of ideas and activities to help youth learn important nutrition information based on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The resource includes adaptable learning activities for grades K-4 and 5-8.

This resource, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provides basic concepts to help you sort through nutrition research and dietary advice.

This resource from the U.S. Department of Agriculture highlights 2012 changes in school meal standards designed to align school meals with the latest nutrition science and the real world circumstances of America’s schools.

This protein education resource, from the National Dairy Council, explains the importance of protein to an active lifestyle.

This protein education resource, from the National Dairy Council, gives an overview of what protein is, and explains what foods are high-quality protein.

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.

This online resource from the National Dairy Council describes the nutrient value requirements of school lunches, discusses food groups that children are encouraged to eat more of, and provides information about how school lunch—both its offerings and its timing—and teacher involvement in students' nutrition education can help youth improve their healthy eating habits.

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 online resources from the Washington State Dairy Council was developed to assist visual learners when reading Nutrition Food Labels. 280 foods are available for free download with bar graphs representing 10 nutrients and Calories per recommended serving size.

From the USDA, this site includes tipsheets with information on all of the food groups, physical activity ideas, planning tools and printable resources. Use this clickable resource to learn more about each food group and its benefits. Each section of the collection provides a brief overview of a food group, with a link to more information and examples of healthy eating.

This collection of resources from the USDA's Food and Nutrition Services department includes links to policy and training resources, curricular materials, core nutrition messaging, and other nutrition education materials. You can also find information here on the Healthier US School Challenge.