Double Feature: National Breakfast Week & National Nutrition Month

Today is March 1, which is the start of National Nutrition Month. As you know, we at Iowa Avenue are passionate about nutrition—that is, proper nutrition.

To start our celebration of National Nutrition Month, I want to highlight National School Breakfast Week, an Integral part of our national public school system’s program.

This year’s National School Breakfast Week’s theme is “Fuel your Imagination.”

Here are some facts about the School Breakfast Program:

School breakfast provides 25% of the recommended daily allowance of protein, calcium and iron, vitamins A and C and calories for your kids as well as meeting federal nutrition guidelines based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Congress established the School Breakfast Program (SBP), first as a pilot program in 1966, then permanently in 1975. SBP is federally funded, locally delivered nutrition program, similar to the National School Lunch Program (NSLP).

SBP provides a nutritious breakfast to more than 9.3 million children each school day.

Over 80,000 schools and institutions serve school breakfast every day, compared to almost 100,000 that offer NSLP.

For fiscal year 2006, Congress appropriated $2.07 billion for the SBP.

Innovative approaches to serving breakfast include serving it during first period, ‘grab and go’ bags in the halls or even serving on the school bus.

With the background you now have about the SBP program, how about a recipe?

Over the years, the SBP administrators included breakfasts they thought kids would like, were not too expensive, and wouldn’t take a long time to eat.

Due to morning time constraints, most kids have about 15-20 minutes for breakfast. Therefore, innovation has been part of the SBP.

How about a Breakfast Burrito? Many children enjoy this:

So if you have kids—or if you don’t—this idea from the National School Breakfast program is good to know.

As the week progresses, we will continue to stress the importance of breakfast and highlight additional ideas, information, recipes, with our traditional Iowa Avenue twist of humor.

So, get ready to get up early. It’s time for breakfast, because

After all, it’s about a healthy lifestyle!