Mind Your Fs and Vs: How To Get Kids Eat Healthier School Lunches

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​Alec Shostek, BS

​When I was in elementary school, the quintessential school-bought lunch contained a generic deli meat sandwich slathered with mayo, a carton of milk, and a bag of overly salted potato chips. Delicious and loved by nearly every student, the food being served was far from nutritious. The standards for school lunches have drastically changed after the implementation of federal policies, particularly the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010. This bill provided funding for school meals and child nutrition, promoted overall student wellness, and, perhaps most notably, set very clear standards for making school meals healthier by including key reforms to school meals such as increasing fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

On April 23rd, 2019 the USDA released the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study, which was a nationally representative, comprehensive assessment of school meals after the enactment of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The new nutrition standards were a clear winner. It led to a an improvement in the Healthy Eating Index (HEI-2010), a measure of diet quality, for both school-provided breakfast and lunch. Over 90% of daily school lunch menus met the National School Lunch Program daily quantity requirements for fruit, and about 80% met them for vegetables. Plate waste, a measure of the amount of available food that is discarded (or not consumed), was highest for vegetables (31% on observed lunch trays was wasted) and followed closely by fruits and 100% fruit juice (26%), but that really hasn’t changed after the new standards.

F&V are an imperative component to our diets and contain many important nutrients including: dietary fiber, potassium, and vitamin C. Eating a diet rich in F&V also lowers the risk of various chronic diseases such as cancer, obesity and cardiovascular disease. Unfortunately, due to a variety of factors, such as socioeconomic status and dietary preferences, only four in ten children eat enough fruit, and fewer than one in ten children eat the recommended daily amounts of vegetables.

Finding novel ways to increase F&V consumption in children during school meals may lead to important changes. Researchers at Columbia University investigated this issue by assessing the impact of school lunch environmental factors on F&V consumption by conducting a cross-sectional observation study in 14 elementary schools in New York City. For one year, the researchers assessed students’ school lunch food selection and consumption by visual observation. They also examined ten relevant school lunch environmental factors such as: lunch after recess, fruits and vegetables pre-plated, sliced or precut fruits, and providing two or more F&V options. The researchers found that precutting fruit and having the students engage in recess prior to lunch were each positively associated with higher fruit consumption. Pre-plating vegetables, having more options, and lunch after recess also was associated with higher vegetable consumption. Previous research has found similar results, indicating that altering environmental factors can positively influence F&V consumption.

The new nutrition standards for school meals are working, but we can apparently do better to increase F&V consumption and reduce plate waste. Accomplishing this could be completed by school administration teams relatively easily and at low costs by having lunch after recess, pre-plating F&V and pre-cutting fruit. Having more F&V options to choose from might be a more costly approach but is another option. Policies like Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act are a step in the right direction for providing healthier meals to kids, but there is more work to be done.

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About the author: Alec Shostek is a Research Assistant for Project Viva. He joined the team in 2018 and has assisted with data collection and the analysis of bone density scans. Alec enjoys baking, playing disc golf, rock climbing, and being in the woods in his free time.