The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is an important food program that feeds nearly 3.2 million children and 112,000 adults daily. The purpose of CACFP is to improve the quality of daycares as well as adult care centers for many low-income families. In addition to daycare and adult care centers, this food program extends its services out to afterschool programs and shelters for children. Recently, the Institute of Medicine suggested that CACFP improve the quality of the food they provide for its participants. Furthermore, in the US 1 in 5 children is considered obese, this alarming number is one of the reasons CACFP should look into revising their current nutritional guidelines. On top of childhood obesity, every individual should have the right to experience the highest in nutrition standards regardless of income. In conclusion, some of the recommendations include:
- use only breast milk or formula for infants under 6 months
- refrain from giving fruit juice of any type for children younger than 1 year old
- limit foods high in solid fats and added sugars
- separate fruits and vegetables into separate categories, and increase the number of servings of each per week.
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