Shaping Early Palates

KinderCare Learning Companies

2020 Progress Report

Year Committed: 2018

Length of Commitment: 3 years

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Committed to a number of changes involving center menus and nutrition programs, including removing all grain-based desserts from 100 percent of their centers, incorporating at least one culturally diverse dish each week a vegetarian entrée twice per week on their standard menu, ensuring healthy options are offered during all holiday events and celebrations, integrating parent education into the KinderCare Cooking Academy and developing a nutrition training curriculum for Center Directors and Cooks. Additionally, KinderCare plans to assess current garden offerings at centers, develop a package of new scalable indoor and outdoor gardening options and share best practices for gardening initiatives in early childhood education.

Verified Results

Implementation Date
November 2019
Reporting Date
December 2020

Commitment Element
Provide a company review of the meal ordering and planning at centers and highlight new additional nutritious options or less commonly ordered nutritious items, twice a year.
Progress To Date

In January 2020, KinderCare updated its menu to add a greater variety of recipes and flavors from around the world and increase lower sugar offerings. It has removed dessert items such as marshmellows, chocolate chips, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream. In October 2020, KinderCare made minor seasonal changes.
Implementation Date
November 2020
Reporting Date
December 2020

Commitment Element
Publish a white paper on KinderCare's best practices for gardening options
Progress To Date

In 2020, KinderCare published a white paper, "Creating Healthy Habits Through Gardening". The paper makes the case for how school gardens can support health among children and provides excerpts from KinderCare's Garden Toolkit. Topics covered in the toolkit section include types of gardens that can be created, what to grow, supplies needed, and how to get started with and maintain a garden. In addition, the white paper discusses a variety of benefits from establishing a garden.
Implementation Date
November 2019
Reporting Date
December 2020

Commitment Element
Provide resources developed for families at least twice a year encouraging implementation of standards at home.
Progress To Date

KinderCare provided resources for families that encouraged implementing healthy standards at home more than two times during 2020. Resources included information on a healthy digestive system, feeding in the first year of life, eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, and tips for planning meals.

Partner Statement

KinderCare Education, including our KinderCare Learning Centers, KinderCare at Work, and Champions brands, is proud to enter our seventh year of working with Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA). As the nation’s largest private provider of high-quality early childhood education, our partnership with PHA reinforces our longstanding commitment to using our voice to support young children and their families throughout our country. Since we made our first PHA commitments in 2014 all of us at KinderCare have worked conscientiously and continuously to improve our menu and serve healthy meals that children enjoy; positively impacting the health and wellness of hundreds of thousands of children around the country. Our recent menu changes include removing all grain-based desserts, adding culturally diverse dishes, and increasing our vegetarian options. We also reduced the amount of added sugar in the foods we serve and integrated parent education into our Cooking Academy curriculum. To help children connect with the food they eat we developed resources for our centers and sites, and for the general public, on indoor and outdoor garden options. Those best practices are available in this white paper. As we continue to partner with PHA, all of us at KinderCare remain dedicated to continuing the work of helping children, their families, and their teachers develop healthy habits that will last a lifetime.