Meal Pattern Minute: Taking Food Offsite

Serving Child and Adult Care Food Program meals helps children and adults gain access to nutritious foods on a consistent basis. Some centers or family child care home may provide breakfast, lunch/supper, and/or snack to those in their care. There are days that a parent/guardian picks up their child during a meal time. If a child is served their food, could they take it with them when the parent picks them up? 

 Tune in to this week’s Meal Pattern Minute with Isabel Ramos-Lebron, MS, RDN, LD as she discusses when it is and is not allowed to take food off-site after child is served. 

 After viewing the video, look at the additional resources below to help you stay within the regulations when operating in the CACFP.  

When serving children on-site, there is only one program in the CACFP that allows food to be taken off-site once served and this is the At-Risk Afterschool Program where CACFP meals are served.  The child is allowed to take one meal component (grain, fruit, or vegetable). Be sure to know which types of grains, fruits and vegetables are allowable to be taken off-site for food safety reasons. Consult with your State agency on this. More information can be found in the USDA memo: Taking Food Components Offsite in the At-Risk Afterschool Component of the Child and Adult Care Food Program. Below you will find excerpts from this memo in relation to the meal pattern minute question. 

• The purpose of this memorandum is to extend to the at-risk afterschool component of the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) the flexibility to take certain food items offsite. This flexibility is currently permitted in the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) and National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Due to the nature of the at-risk afterschool component of the CACFP and its similarities with the SFSP and NSLP, this allowance only applies to the at-risk afterschool component of the CACFP. This memorandum supersedes CACFP 22-2016: Taking Food Components Off-site in the At-Risk Afterschool Component of the Child and Adult Care Food Program, August 10, 2016. 
• However, the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) recognizes that some children, for a variety of reasons, may want to save some food items to eat at a later time. For this reason, and due to the similar nature of the CACFP’s at-risk afterschool component with the SFSP and NLSP, CACFP at-risk afterschool institutions may now allow children to take one vegetable, fruit, or grain item offsite to eat at a later time. The food item a child takes offsite must be from the child’s own meal or snack, or left on a share table by another child who did not want it. 
• FNS encourages at-risk afterschool institutions to use this flexibility to increase children’s consumption of vegetables and fruit, and help reduce potential food waste in the CACFP.  

 Want to make a share table at your location? Read more with this USDA memo to see if having a share table is right for you: The Use of Share Tables in the Child Nutrition Programs.

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