900.13 Nutrition.
(a) Provision must be made to ensure that residents can conveniently
obtain three well-balanced meals daily. In tier I and tier II facilities, meal service may
be provided at the facility, or outside the facility, whether directly or through
contractual arrangements, or in restaurants through the use of food stamps or voucher
arrangements. In congregate shelters for homeless pregnant women, meal service must be
provided at the shelter whether directly or through contractual arrangements.
(b) In shelters which prepare their own meals, food-buying and menu-
planning arrangements must be overseen by a staff member, consulting dietician, or
volunteer sufficiently knowledgeable in nutrition and dietetics to ensure the planning of
well-balanced meals and the purchase of food of good quality and sufficient quantity so
that adult and child residents, including pregnant women and infants, receive at least
three nutritional meals and appropriate healthful snacks daily.
(c) Contracted food services are allowable. Meals purchased from a
vendor must meet the nutritional needs of residents.
(d) Tier I and tier II facilities must provide refrigeration and
cooking equipment to accommodate the feeding of infants and the storage of medication.
Formula, milk, baby food and juices for infants must be provided in tier I facilities and
those tier II facilities which provide three meals a day, and must be available on a
24-hour basis. In tier II facilities, which provide fewer than three meals a day, formula,
milk, baby food and juices for infants must be provided only in emergency circumstances
where a family requests such items including, but not limited to, circumstances where the
family has no funds to purchase them.
(e) Special medically prescribed dietary or nutritional needs of any
adult or child resident must be accommodated regardless of the food-buying and meal
preparation arrangements of the program.
(f) Notwithstanding subdivision (a) of this section, a facility which
has facilities capable of providing meals to residents must provide three meals per day.
Meals may be provided directly or through contractual arrangements. Residents may not be
charged for these meals.