Kids Eat More Fruits and Veggies: Are Healthier School Lunches Paying Off?

   By SheSpeaksTeam  Mar 09, 2014

1

Your child may still be complaining about the new healthier school lunches, but some new data is now suggesting that they’re actually starting to eat it. New evidence claims school age children are incorporating more fruits and vegetables in their diets and this may be due to the extra helpings of these items they are getting in their school cafeterias each day.

CNN reports about the study’s findings published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine that children are eating more greens. Many children have taken some time to adjust to the new menus after the changes to the National School Lunch program in 2010. It was even reported  that some schools dropped out of the program due to it’s unpopularity among students.

But the new study suggests patience may have paid off for some students. Authors of the study explain, “Contrary to media reports, these results suggest that the new school meal standards have improved students' overall diet quality. Legislation to weaken the standards is not warranted.”

The researchers tracked both how many fruits and vegetables students added to their trays at lunchtime and how much of these items were thrown away rather than eaten. New requirements force students to take at least one fruit or vegetable and rather than throw them away it turns out kids are eating actually eating more now than before. Research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health Juliana Cohen says, “There was a fear that if you're forcing students to take the fruit, that they would take it and then throw it in the garbage, and that's not what we found. We found that, in fact, students were consuming the fruit.”

What do you think of the new study that finds kids are eating more of their fruits and veggies during school lunch?

Do you think the changes to the school lunch are helping our kids eat healthier?