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Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP)
USDA’s Child and Adult Care Food Program plays a vital role in improving the quality of day care and making it more affordable for many low-income families. Each day, 2.6 million children receive nutritious meals and snacks through CACFP. The program also provides meals and snacks to 74,000 adults who receive care in nonresidential adult day care centers. CACFP reaches even further to provide meals to children residing in homeless shelters, and snacks and suppers to youths participating in eligible afterschool care programs.
 
Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP)
CSFP works to improve the health of low-income pregnant and breastfeeding women, other new mothers up to one year postpartum, infants, children up to age six, and elderly people at least 60 years of age by supplementing their diets with nutritious USDA commodity foods. It provides food and administrative funds to States to supplement the diets of these groups.
 
Eat Smart Play Hard
Eat Smart. Play Hard.TM is about making America's children healthier. It's about practical suggestions that will help you motivate children and their caregivers to eat healthy and be active. The Eat Smart. Play Hard.TM Campaign messages and materials are fun for children and informative for caregivers. To make your job easier, we have kid-tested the messages and based them on the Food Guide Pyramid and Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
 
Farmers' Market Nutrition Program (FMNP)
The WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) provides fresh, unprepared, locally grown fruits and vegetables from local farmers' markets to Women, Infants and Children (WIC) recipients.
 
Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR)
FDPIR is a Federal program that provides commodity foods to low-income households, including the elderly, living on Indian reservations, and to Native American families residing in designated areas near reservations. 
 
Food Assistance for Disaster Relief
FNS’s Food Distribution Division has the primary responsibility of supplying food to disaster relief organizations such as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army for mass feeding or household distribution. Disaster organizations request food and nutrition assistance through State agencies that run USDA’s nutrition assistance programs. State agencies notify USDA of the types and quantities of food that relief organizations need for emergency feeding operations.
 
Food Stamp Program
The Food Stamp Program helped put food on the table for some 10.3 million households and 23.9 million individuals each day in Fiscal Year 2004. It provides low-income households with coupons or electronic benefits they can use like cash at most grocery stores to ensure that they have access to a healthy diet.
 
National School Lunch Program (NSLP)
School districts and independent schools that choose to take part in the lunch program get cash subsidies and donated commodities from the USDA for each meal they serve. In return, they must serve lunches that meet Federal requirements, and they must offer free or reduced price lunches to eligible children. School food authorities can also be reimbursed for snacks served to children through age 18 in afterschool educational or enrichment programs.
 
School Breakfast Program (SBP)
The School Breakfast Program operates in the same manner as the National School Lunch Program.  School districts and independent schools that choose to take part in the breakfast program receive cash subsidies from the USDA for each meal they serve. In return, they must serve breakfasts that meet Federal requirements, and they must offer free or reduced price breakfasts to eligible children.
 
Senior Farmers' Market Nutrition Program (SFMNP)
The Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program awards grants to States, United States territories, and federally-recognized Indian tribal governments to provide low-income seniors with coupons that can be exchanged for eligible foods at farmers’ markets, roadside stands, and community supported agriculture programs.
 
Special Milk Program (SMP)
Participating schools and institutions receive reimbursement from the USDA for each half pint of milk served. They must operate their milk programs on a non-profit basis. They agree to use the Federal reimbursement to reduce the selling price of milk to all children.
 
State Processing Program
The State Processing Program allows States and eligible recipient agencies such as school districts to contract with commercial food processors to convert bulk or raw USDA commodities into more convenient ready-to-use end products. Most of the commodities processed through this program go to schools participating in the National School Lunch Program. Once the donated food is made available to States, the overall organization and administration of the State Processing Program become the responsibilities of the State agency.
 
Summer Food Service Program (SFSP)
SFSP is the single largest Federal resource available for local sponsors who want to combine a feeding program with a summer activity program. Children in your community do not need to go hungry this summer. During the school year, nutritious meals are available through the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. But those programs end when school ends for the summer. The Summer Food Service Program helps fill the hunger gap.
 
Team Nutrition
Team Nutrition is a USDA initiative to provide training and technical assistance for foodservice, nutrition education for children and their caregivers, and school and community support for healthy eating and physical activity. Team Nutrition's Goal is to improve children's lifelong eating and physical activity habits by using the principles of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the Food Guide Pyramid.
 
The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP)
Under TEFAP, commodity foods are made available by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to States. States provide the food to local agencies that they have selected, usually food banks, which in turn, distribute the food to soup kitchens and food pantries that directly serve the public.
 
Women, Infants and Children (WIC)
The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children - better known as the WIC Program - serves to safeguard the health of low-income women, infants, & children up to age 5 who are at nutritional risk by providing nutritious foods to supplement diets, information on healthy eating, and referrals to health care.
 



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