A few days back, a friend of mine asked me what I do for a living.  I explained that I was a National Sales Manager for Heartland School Solutions.   We hadn’t seen each other in a few years, and as the father of twins beginning kindergarten this year, he was very interested to hear all about it.  We chatted about our careers, and I began to think about the complexity of our K-12 food service industry.

With over 30 million students participating in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) everyday, you might not be surprised to hear that those same students generate over $600 million in food waste each year.  Making an effort to reduce food waste can save your operation money, increase meal consumption in the lunchroom, and help minimize your school's impact on the environment.

Here are some simple solutions to reduce food waste before it happens, recover foods that are on their way to the trash, and recycle food waste that might otherwise end up in a landfill:

The new school year is here! Get your menus ready with free easy-to-use templates that look as good as your meals do.  With fun designs for each month, these menus are sure to catch the eye of your students' parents.

As food costs continue to climb and many families struggle to make ends meet, school districts across the country continue to see a rise in unpaid meal charges.  In SNA's State of School Nutrition 2014 survey, nearly 71% of schools reported that their meal program had unpaid student meal debt at the end of the 2012-13 school year.

From all of us at Heartland School Solutions, we'd like to wish you a happy and safe holiday season!

And with 2016 right around the corner, let's take a look at the most popular Connections blogs posts from this year:

Thanksgiving is the perfect time for a school community to come together and celebrate the spirit of the holiday with one another. How are you celebrating Thanksgiving in your district this year?

If you need a little inspiration, below are a few activities you can do with your staff and students to help you get into the spirit of the holiday.

This year's theme 'School Lunch Snapshot' encourages schools to share pictures of real school food on their social media pages, blogs, websites, newsletters, and more.

Social sharing provides nutrition programs the perfect avenue for showing off their healthy menus, helping to increase overall participation and educating their community on the benefits of school food.

Project Bread is a non-profit organization based in Boston, MA that strives to “bring a fresh approach to ending hunger”. With a dedicated group of public educators, thought leaders, nutrition professionals, and loyal donors, Project Bread has grown to become a huge player and catalyst in the fight for ending hunger.

One of their primary initiatives is providing schools with resources that help them serve healthy meals to our students every day. In Project Bread’s Let’s Cook Healthy School Meals Cookbook, they generously provide 100 healthy, satisfying, kid-approved recipes for schools across the nation.

In America, we have become accustomed to what the typical school lunch looks like.  But in other countries, kids are served fare that's similar in some ways and strikingly different in other ways.  This curiosity led me on a search to find some of the most interesting school lunches served around the world: