Dear Editor:

Area school meals offer students milk, fruits, vegetables, proteins and grains which meet the USDA requirements for calories, saturated fat and portion size. Our breakfast and lunches meet standards requiring:

• Age-appropriate calorie limits
• Larger servings of vegetables and fruits (students must take at least one serving of produce)
• A wider variety of vegetables, including dark green and red/orange vegetables and legumes
• Fat-free or 1 percent milk (flavored milk must be fat-free)
• More whole grains
• And less sodium

Now is a great time to encourage your kids to choose school lunch. School meals are a great value and a huge convenience for busy families. We continue to strive to provide students with healthier and tastier choices by purchasing local grown products as much as possible and by adding many different kinds of fruit and vegetables to our menus. We do homemade rolls and scratch cooking as well as taste-testing on new products and entrees. We’re also looking forward to working with local chefs this coming school year.

We continue to work with the Nutrislice Company that creates online interactive school menus for both our website and free mobile app (for smartphones). These menus contain photos and descriptions of menu items, as well as nutrition and allergen information. Learn more at www.nutrislice.com and look for our menus at aos98schools.org.

We will send menus home for September and October and then discontinue as this information will be in the school newsletter and our website. Parents and students can pay cash daily, weekly, monthly and you have the option to prepay online.

We look forward to welcoming your children to the cafeteria this fall. To find out more about AOS 98 healthy school meals, contact Darlene French, School Nutrition Director at 207-633-7131 or dfrench@csd3-bres.org.

Darlene French

School Nutrition Director

AOS 98