A Commitment to Healthy Growth and Development

For many economically-struggling families, providing balanced nutrition in the after school hours is difficult. Fortunately, numerous children participate in after school enrichment programs located in low-income areas providing NIFB with an opportunity to supplement recreational and educational programming with good food and nutritional education. As a sponsoring organization of the federal child nutrition programs, administered through the Illinois Department of Education, NIFB is able to partner with local after school enrichment programs. In the last year, NIFB sponsored 108 after school sites in 11 different counties, delivered nearly 500,000 nutritious snacks and meals to an average of 4,100 children per day.

NIFB’s after school nutrition programs are designed to meet the programmatic and physical capabilities of the activity sites as well as the nutritional needs of the children. Nutrition programs offered are: a snack, hot evening meal, or a cold supper – NIFB’s nationally recognized “SuperSnack”.
 
What is a SuperSnack?
As NIFB discussed the nutritional needs of the children already receiving snacks, we learned that for many children, the snack was not enough food during the extended time between a morning lunch at school and the available food at home late in the evening. Program staff at partner sites were concerned that the children were not receiving enough nutritionally-based calories to fully benefit from the recreational and educational activities offered. Furthermore, as NIFB responded to inquiries regarding the hot supper program, it was clear that most of our sites could not meet the adequate kitchen and other facility requirements needed to serve a hot evening meal. In response, NIFB proposed a cold supper program – The SuperSnack. Meeting the USDA requirements of a supper, the SuperSnack – a non-traditional supper and more than a snack – provides an average of 31% of the daily caloric requirements, 24 grams of protein, 100% of the Vitamin C requirements, 50% of the daily calcium requirements, 19% of the daily iron requirements, and 51% of Vitamin A requirements.
 
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