ResearchOriginal ResearchUpdated Nutrition Standards Have Significantly Improved the Nutritional Quality of School Lunches and Breakfasts
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
School menu data from SY 2014-2015 were used to assess the nutritional quality of meals after the updated standards were in place. These data were collected as part of the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study (SNMCS), which was funded by USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service and examined a broad array of other topics, including the school food environment, student participation and dietary intakes, plate waste, and the cost of producing school meals.19, 20, 21, 22, 23 The study was designed to
School Lunches
The mean total HEI-2010 score for school lunches served in SY 2014-2015 was 82% of the maximum possible score (Table 2). School lunches received near-perfect scores (defined as 95% of the maximum possible score or higher) for four of the adequacy components—total fruit, whole fruit, whole grains, and dairy. The score for total protein foods was slightly lower (90%) and was followed by scores for total vegetables, greens and beans, fatty acids, and seafood and plant proteins. Among the
Discussion
These national results show that the lunches and breakfasts served in schools across the United States were more nutritious after the updated nutrition standards were in place and were largely consistent with DGA recommendations.6,7 In addition, these findings suggest that school lunches and breakfasts served during SY 2014-2015 were of higher nutritional quality than children’s overall diets. Based on the most recently reported national data, children’s 24-hour intakes during 2011 and 2012 had
Conclusions
The updated nutrition standards for school meals have significantly improved the nutritional quality of the meals and their consistency with the DGA. These results provide strong evidence that nutrition standards are important in ensuring that children have access to healthy meals during the school day. In the future, it will be important to monitor the nutritional quality of school meals, especially after schools have time to overcome implementation challenges with the standards, implement new
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Kelley Monzella, Katherine Niland, and Ronette Briefel for their contributions to the study and article. The authors also thank staff at Food and Nutrition Service of the US Department of Agriculture, including John Endahl, Alice Ann Gola, Kelley Scanlon, Margaret Applebaum, and Sara Olson, for their guidance and oversight of the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study.
E. C. Gearan is a senior researcher and deputy director of nutrition policy research, Mathematica, Cambridge, MA.
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The New school food standards and nutrition of school children: Direct and Indirect Effect Analysis
2020, Economics and Human BiologyCitation Excerpt :Previous evaluations of the dietary impacts of the HHFKA, typically small localized studies, showed that the new nutritional standards were associated with improvements in the quality of school foods offered (Terry-McElrath et al., 2015), selected and consumed (Bergman et al., 2014; Cohen et al., 2014; Cullen et al., 2015; Schwartz et al., 2015; Johnson et al., 2016; Smith et al., 2016; Cohen et al., 2019), while not having an adverse impact on the plate waste (Schwartz et al., 2015) or school meal program participation rates (Johnson et al., 2016; Vaudrin et al., 2018). Recently, using national-level data, Gearan and Fox (2020) documented significant improvements in the quality of school food offerings after implementation of the HHFKA.1 However, they did not investigate the impact on the dietary quality of children’s food intakes (the amount and kinds of foods children actually eat at school).
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E. C. Gearan is a senior researcher and deputy director of nutrition policy research, Mathematica, Cambridge, MA.
M. K. Fox is senior fellow and director of nutrition policy research, Mathematica, Cambridge, MA.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS E. C. Gearan conducted the analyses with technical guidance from M. K. Fox. E. C. Gearan wrote the first draft of the manuscript with contributions from M. K. Fox. Both authors reviewed and commented on subsequent drafts of the manuscript.
STATEMENT OF POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
FUNDING/SUPPORT The studies were funded by the Food and Nutrition Service of the US Department of Agriculture.