Food Services Resources
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FOOD SERVICE
- Oklahoma Farm to School Program (healthy locally grown food for schools): Farm to School aims at getting Oklahoma-grown food on the cafeteria trays of school children. It encourages farmers to sell produce to schools and encourages schools to buy a part of their fresh fruit and vegetable needs from Oklahoma farmers along with local healthy farm products.
- Guide to Conducting Student Food Waste Audits: This student food waste audit guide is intended to help educate students about the amount of food they waste in
their school cafeterias and to encourage them to reduce waste and eat more of the nutritious foods provided through USDA’s school meals programs or brought from home. - Local Producers: Made in Oklahoma Products, Oklahoma Food Cooperative, and OK Farm & Food Alliance.
- The Lunch Box: An online toolkit with Healthy Tools for All Schools, packed with solutions at your fingertips. Use any of these free tools to transform your school food into healthy and delicious food for all children, at every school.
- Zero Waste Lunchroom: According to the U.S. EPA, packing a waste-free lunch saves an average student $250 and 67 pounds of trash per nine-month school year.
- Make Everyday a Waste Free Lunch Day: This guide from the DEQ provides tips for making lunch everyday a waste free event.
- DEQ ‘Food for Thought-Best Management Practices for Food Handling Facilities: Almost all our activities have environmental costs. It takes energy and resources to produce goods and services, and energy and resources to deal with the ultimate disposal of those goods and their byproducts. This guide will be helpful to those who want to implement environmentally aware policies and practices.
- USE LESS STUFF Tips for Reducing Food Waste: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American household spends $7,000 on food annually. The Department of Agriculture estimates that at least 25% of this food is wasted. Here is the USE LESS STUFF top 10 list of ways to reduce food waste.