Meal Pattern Minute: Breakfast Components
July 14, 2022
Operators must follow the Child and Adult Care Food Program meal pattern in order to get reimbursed for each meal. So what does that look like for breakfast? How many of the five meal pattern components (grains, meat/meat alternate, fruit, vegetable and fluid milk) must be served in order to be creditable?
Take a minute to hear from our nutrition education specialist, Isabel Ramos-Lebron, MS, RDN, LD to learn more about what makes up a creditable breakfast.
After you've watched the video, here are some additional things to remember about breakfast crediting, which you can find in the Crediting Handbook for the CACFP:
- When serving a combination of fruit, vegetables or both, the minimum required serving amount for each type of fruit or vegetable is 1/8 cup, or 2 tablespoons.
- Fluid milk may be served as a beverage, with cereal, or as part of a smoothie. For more information on using milk in smoothies, check out one of our earlier Meal Pattern Minute videos on the subject.
- Breakfast cereals must contain no more than 6 grams of sugar per dry ounce.
- Adult participants my have 6 ounces of yogurt in place of 1 cup of fluid milk once per day. However, the yogurt must then credit as fluid milk and may not credit as a meat/meat alternate.
Here are some more resources that you can use when menu planning for breakfast:
- USDA Webinar: Breakfast Basics
- USDA Resource: Serving Meat and Meat Alternates at Breakfast (English/Spanish)
- USDA Webinar: Serving Meat and Meat Alternates at Breakfast
- USDA Resource: Calculating Sugar Limits for Breakfast Cereals/Choose Breakfast Cereals That Are Lower in Sugar (English/Spanish)
- USDA Webinar: Choose Breakfast Cereals That Are Lower in Added Sugars
- NCA Resource: Identifying Cereal Sugar Limits
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