Students trash more fruits and vegetables when they're forced to take them under a federal school lunch mandate, according to a study published Tuesday.
Researchers compared lunchtime fruit and vegetable consumption at two elementary schools before and after the mandate kicked in. The mandate requires students to take either a fruit or vegetable with a meal reimbursable under the school lunch program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The study in the journal Public Health Reports used digital imaging to more accurately track food students took away on their trays, and to compare it with food students dumped into the trash. It was performed at two elementary schools in the Northeast, surveyed in 2012 before the mandate and the next year after the mandate took effect.
Students throw out more fruits and vegetables when they’re forced to take them as part of their lunches, according to a study published Tuesday that offers yet another critique of the federal government’s mandate to make school meals healthier.
Researchers compared lunchtime fruit and vegetable consumption at two Northeast elementary schools before and after the mandate kicked in. The program requires students to take a fruit or vegetable with a meal that’s subsidized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is the setup at most schools nationwide.
The study in the journal Public Health Reports, used digital imaging to more accurately compare the amount of food that students put on their trays versus how much they later dumped as trash. The researchers first conducted their analysis in 2012, before the mandate took effect, and again the next year — after the initiative had begun.
Waste of fruits and vegetables increased by 56 percent after the mandate, from an average 0.25 cups thrown away to 0.39 cups. Moreover, students actually ate less of them. Fruit and vegetable consumption declined from 0.51 cup to 0.45 cup, said study leader Sarah Amin, a nutrition researcher at the University of Vermont.
The study can be found at j.mp/lunchschool.
Congress imposed the mandate in 2010, which became effective in 2012, under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act.
“These guidelines rocked the school meal world,” Amin said. “For the first time, children who normally turned down fruits or vegetables were required to take a selection if they wanted lunch.
“In our study, we found that requiring them to select a fruit or vegetable under these guidelines might have led the children who were not consuming them in the first place, throwing them out and still continuing not to consume them.”
The study adds to evidence that well-meaning attempts to make schoolchildren eat supposedly healthy diets often clash with the children's eating preferences. About 70 percent of the extra mandated fruits and vegetables were thrown out, according to a 2013 study in Public Health Nutrition by researchers from Brigham Young University and Cornell.
Schoolchildren often find the "healthy" diets, encouraged by federal officials and First Lady Michelle Obama, to be bland, unappetizing, or worse. Students around the country blame Obama for their "gross" meals, according to a Washington Post article published last year.
Whether the mandates are actually necessary for health is the subject of fierce scientific debate. Recent studies have found federal standards for intake of animal fat, salt and cholesterol to be based on poor science that is now giving way to better nutritional studies.
However, none of this new information has so far prompted a change in federal standards.
The resistance goes beyond just dumping food. In June, a school board official in Indiana told a congressional committee that children were smuggling in banned condiments.
"Perhaps the most colorful example in my district is that students have been caught bringing – and even selling – salt, pepper and sugar in school to add taste to perceived bland and tasteless cafeteria food," said John S. Payne, president of the Blackford County School Board of Trustees of Hartford City, Indiana.
Payne spoke before the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education on June 24.
However, Amin said children's nutrition is too important to give up. She suggests that school lunch menus be planned to include fruits and vegetables in forms students are willing to eat.
In an earlier study published in the Journal of Child Nutrition and Management, Amin and colleagues examined what types of fruits and vegetables children voluntarily selected before the new mandate took effect. They preferred processed foods, such as apple juice, rather than raw ones.
In the new paper, Amin says a bit of creativity can make it more likely that children will actually eat food considered to be healthy, instead of just throwing it away.
Amin suggests cutting up vegetables and serving them with dip, or slicing up oranges and apples, instead of serving them whole.
Amin's co-authors at the University of Vermont include research associate Bethany Yon and Rachel Johnson, the Robert L. Bickford Jr. Green and Gold Professor of Nutrition and Food Sciences, and Jennifer Taylor, a graduate student at UC Davis.
Nutrition, San Diego style
For the San Diego Unified School District, such findings are "old news," said Gary Petill director of food and nutrition service for San Diego Unified School District. What's more, the district has long practiced ways to make healthy fruits and vegetables attractive to children.
What's needed is attention to the food quality and how it's presented to the children, he said. Instead of regarding schoolchildren as a captive audience, it's better to treat them as customers to be wooed.
Presenting fruits and vegetables in easy-to-eat forms makes a big difference for busy children, Petill said. Instead of giving them whole apples and oranges, for example, they're cut up into wedges that kids can just pop into their mouths.
Slices of mango, jicama, and other produce are arrayed in cups for the children to take.
"Maybe once in a while we'll do applesauce for the little guys, because they're used to it," Petill said. "Most of the time we'll do apple wedges for them."
San Diego is fortunate to have a wide variety of locally grown fruits and vegetables to choose from, Petill said. And the school district takes full advantage of that bounty.
For example, Stehly Farms Organics in Valley Center provides a small avocado called the Pee Wee that's especially attractive to kids.
"They're small, but the kids love taking half an avocado and eating right out of it," Petill said. "A lot of the kids are Hispanic -- they know exactly what to do with it."
Introducing children to these foods from the beginning of their education, starting in kindergarten, is also important, Petill said. When children grow up with the foods, they're much more likely to enjoy them than if they're suddenly introduced.
"As they see it and taste it, they grow into it," Petill said. "And we expand those choices in middle and high school. It's all about teaching them good eating habits for their lives."