Kids throw away fruit, veggies at school lunches

The USDA mandated more fruit and vegetables in school lunch menus in 2012. “The answer was clearly no”.

Less than a month before Congress votes on whether to reauthorize a controversial program mandating healthier school lunches, a new study confirms the suspicions of school officials – many students are putting the fruits and vegetables they’re now required to take straight into the trash, consuming fewer than they did before the law took effect.

New federal guidelines requiring healthier school lunches have made headlines in recent years, but that doesn’t mean kids are eating them up.

A 2014 study from the Harvard School of Public Health found the opposite result – that kids actually ate more fruits and vegetables after the new standards were put into place.

This isn’t the first study to look at fruit and vegetable consumption in school children after the federal guidelines passed.

As expected, simply giving kids and teens the option of consuming healthier foods does not make them do so, partly because no one tried to change their perception of fruits and vegetables, and partly because many kids (and even adults) admit to not really liking their taste.

Comparing the amount of fruit and vegetables that elementary schoolchildren selected, consumed and wasted both before and after the scheme was introduced, it found that consumption actually decreased slightly while waste increased compared with when the products’ selection was optional. “It was heartbreaking to see so many students toss fruits like apples into the trash right after exiting the lunch line”. Instead of relying on the weight of food waste, there was photographic evidence of what kids were doing to their trays as they reached the cashier and passed the food disposal area.

In conclusion, the report supported the importance of public health practitioners addressing the environmental, home and personal factors that might encourage children’s consumption of fresh produce. Previous studies have shown that processed vegetables such as pizza sauce and 100 percent fruit juice are preferable to many children over whole versions. Besides making sure these options are available, Amin and her team suggested a few additional strategies for increasing consumption of fruits and veggies at school lunch.

Amin and her colleagues offer a number of suggestions for how to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables such as cutting them up and serving with dip or mixing them in with other parts of the meal.

Finally, Amin pointed out that once schools fully acclimate to the guidelines, she thinks overall consumption will increase, especially for those students who entered school as kindergarteners under the new guidelines in 2012 and know no other way. “We can’t give up hope yet”.