It seems as though there’s a week to celebrate everything, but this one is really important to kids and for healthy foods. This week is National School Breakfast Week, celebrating the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s School Breakfast Program. I’ve been thinking about school meals lately, since the release of the new nutritional guidelines for school meals, including breakfasts. Those standards will go into effect for the next school year, 2012-2013, and schools are already looking at the products they will buy next year to include in their meals to meet those new standards. During the 2010-2011 school year, 11.7 million school breakfasts were served each day, with programs in 87,814 schools nationwide (Food Research and Action Center). While this is a significant amount, it’s still much lower than school lunch participation. Many schools have tried innovative approaches to serving breakfast to increase participation, such as serving breakfast in the classroom. These programs require foods that are easy to eat and convenient to clean up while meeting the nutritional requirements. Fluid milk has always been required by the School Breakfast Program, and this will continue, although the new nutrition standards will only allow for low-fat and fat-free white milk and fat-free flavored milk. Yogurt and cheese can be used as meat alternates for breakfast, but meat and meat alternates are not a mandatory component of school breakfasts. There could be a special niche for dairy products that meet the nutritional requirements of the School Breakfast Program, are fun for kids to eat and are convenient for schools to serve either in the cafeteria or in the classroom. Yogurt and granola mixtures that provide both a grain and meat alternate serving, yogurt and fruit blends, and a cheese-and-vegetable breakfast burrito are a few good examples. During National School Breakfast Week, what products do you have that could help meet kid’s nutritional needs at breakfast? What products could you develop to meet both nutrition and convenience goals?