Maryann Durrant (USBE):
Child Nutrition Labels (often abbreviated CN labels) are special labels that are required for certain commercially prepared food products in order to credit as component in the food program. You would need either a CN label or a specific documentation called a product formulation statement when you’re serving a commercially prepared product that contains more than one ingredient and is not listed in the Food Buying Guide. Examples would include commercially prepared chicken nuggets/patties, corn dogs, fish sticks, meat balls, lasagna and pizza. If you are making the product on site, a CN label or Product Formulation Statement would not be required, although we would look at the recipe to ensure that enough of the different components was included meet the minimum portion sizes.
This is an example of a CN label. You can see that it clearly identifies the contribution of a product toward the meal pattern requirements. In order to be able to put a CN label on a product, the product is required to go through an evaluation of it’s formulation by the USDA to determine its contribution toward meal pattern requirements. It is considered the gold standard as far as documentation would go because the crediting information has been verified by the USDA and is accurate.
Now we’ll go through the different aspects of a CN label and talk about what is required to be on a CN label. One of the most noticeable things is the CN logo, which is the distinct border around the wording of the label. The CN label contains the meal pattern contribution statement – in this case it says that “this 5.00 oz pizza with ground beef and vegetables protein product provides 2.00 oz equivalent meat/meat alternate, ½ cup serving of vegetable, and 1 ½ servings of bread alternate for the child nutrition meal pattern requirements”. It has a unique 6-digit product identification number in the upper right hand corner. You can see in this example, the numbers are all zeros. If you saw that all of the numbers were zeros on a package of food you were buying, you would know that the CN label is not a valid label. The CN label also includes the USDA/FNS authorization statement as well as the month and year of final FNS approval at the end of the authorization statement.
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