The Power of the Food Program: Head Start
Head Start Provider
May 15, 2025
Leveraging CACFP to Provide Healthy Meals in High-Need Communities
Head Start and Early Head Start programs ensure that nearly 800,000 children across the United States have access to child care. For many families, these programs are also a vital source of nutrition. Head Start providers are required to participate in a USDA child nutrition program, such as the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP). Through the CACFP, Head Start programs are able to serve nutritious meals that support proper development, especially for children who face food insecurity or have limited access to affordable wholesome foods.
Acelero Learning Monmouth Middlesex (Acelero) operates eight Head Start centers that serve meals to over 800 children through the CACFP. Food Service Coordinator, Stephanie Manchester, and her team work to ensure that they are providing nutritious meals for all of the children across their eight sites.
One of Stephanie’s goals was to incorporate local, fresh foods into their menus. Previously, they primarily relied on a food distributor to procure items for their menu, but they transitioned to using USDA commodities to offer more fresh options. In addition, last summer Stephanie began visiting their local farmers market to purchase fresh produce. She spoke with farmers about her idea to teach children about where their food comes from and was able to start weekly pick-ups of local foods that fit into their menu. All of their sites were able to benefit from the purchase of local foods. In fact, they received so much positive feedback from teachers, that they are looking at incorporating more local foods this upcoming summer.
The team at Acelero seeks out feedback from children and their families that influence their menus. One creative way they were able to get feedback was through a fun taste-testing event they put on during National CACFP Week, where they distributed over 6,000 samples to their sites. Stephanie’s son, a Head Start participant, even inspired her to include pickles and olives in the taste testing. The activity gave children a chance to try new foods, and both they and their parents were able to help shape future menus.
In addition, Stephanie has always focused on providing healthy, nutritious meals that include familiar favorites and new foods to expand children's palates. One challenge Stephanie has faced with introducing new foods, is getting the children to actually eat foods that they are unfamiliar with. Ensuring that children are consuming the meals provided to them is of utmost importance, so Stephanie implemented a strategy where she paired multiple familiar items with one unfamiliar item – for example serving chicken strips, apple slices, a roll, and milk with sugar peas that the children have not tried before. With this strategy in place, they are able to ensure that children get some nutrients in their body and are able to try something new.
Stephanie understands how critically important it is to provide high quality meals to the kids in their program – as a larger number come from low-income households. Many families rely on Head Start as the main source of food for their children.
“Many of our children are low income. That’s partially what drew me to it, growing up myself in an extremely low-income household. I never knew about Head Start honestly until I was much older, until I was an adult. Seeing what the program has done for some of these kids… they are relying on us.”
A passionate belief of Stephanie’s is that it is their duty to feed the children in their programs and to help take care of their families at the same time. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Stephanie and her team stepped up to ensure that the families that they serve had meals to put on the table, even if the Head Start center was closed. They transported thousands of meals across 20 towns to deliver meals to their children’s houses.
“We bused out thousands of meals during that whole covid era where we weren’t open but we had our staff in centers bagging up meals every single day and having a crew of people going house to house across 20 different towns just bringing food to the houses so that these kids could have a meal.”
Head Start programs, and their participation in the CACFP make a difference for children and their families. It is clear that Stephanie and others who operate the CACFP do so because they want to ensure that children get fed and are set up for success.
Research shows that Head Start participants are more likely to have healthy eating patterns, lower Body Mass Index and are less likely to be overweight, compared to non-participants. Head Start graduates also experience better health outcomes through their lifetime – being less likely to have poor health as adults. A recent memo from the Office of Head Start States that, “implementing the CACFP meal patterns helps to ensure children receive a variety of nutrient-dense foods, including whole grains, a variety of fresh fruits, and vegetables, all while reducing intake of ultra-processed foods, added sugar intake and saturated fats (ACF-OHS-IM-25-03).” Head Start is an important part of the CACFP and has a clear, positive impact on those that they serve.
Stephanie Manchester began working in the CACFP with Acelero in 2010.