TDOE consultant demonstrates USDA Food Buying Guide tools, calculator and Exhibit A for school meal crediting

A Northwest Regional Nutrition Consultant for the Tennessee Department of Education led a webinar demonstration of the USDA Food Buying Guide, showing school nutrition staff how to use the guide’s interactive search, Exhibit A grain chart and the Food Buying Guide Calculator to determine meal-pattern crediting and purchasing quantities.

The consultant said the session would cover “crediting in child nutrition programs, crediting individual components utilizing the food buying guide, and then . . . the food buying guide itself,” and walked participants through examples for vegetables, meat/meat alternates, grains and fresh fruit.

The demonstration reviewed four accepted forms of crediting for National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program compliance: the USDA Food Buying Guide, Child Nutrition (CN) labels, product formulation sheets and USDA Foods/Schools product information sheets for commodity items. The presenter opened the Food Buying Guide web tool, explained the choice to continue as guest or create a profile (profiles can save favorites and shopping lists), and showed the landing-page features: food-item search, Exhibit A (grain chart), the Food Buying Guide Calculator and a raw recipe analysis workbook.

Using the food-item search, the consultant showed how the guide displays the meal component (for example, vegetable), subcategory (for example, red/orange vegetable), "food as purchased" (for example, fresh without…