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July 29, 2014 01:00 AM

Healthier school lunches popular with kids: study

Steven Ross Johnson
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    New federal nutrition standards for school lunchrooms have become a lightning rod for Obama administration opponents, who criticize them for prompting lunchroom waste, higher food costs for school districts, and sending students home hungry.

    But now proponents of the guidelines, designed in part to combat the childhood obesity issue, have some ammunition to counter such critics.

    A survey of more than 500 public elementary school administrators and food service staff conducted during the 2012-13 school year has found 70% reporting their students generally like the healthier lunch options that were created in 2012 as part of the updated meal standards by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

    “There have been concerns that kids didn't like the meals,” said Lindsey Turner, lead author of the study that was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and published in the August issue of the journal Childhood Obesity. “I think our study really showed that that's not the case at all.”

    The findings appear to contradict claims by critics, who contend that the meal requirements make it too costly for many school districts to comply, which they say has led to a number of them deciding to leave the program.

    Under 2010's Healthy Hunger–Free Kids Act, the USDA changed the nutrition standards of meals being served under the National School Lunch Program, requiring an increase in whole grains and daily offerings of fruits and vegetables. Milk has been limited to nonfat or 1% options under the new guidelines, which also ban transfats.

    School meal nutrition standards have been at the center of an ongoing debate in the House of Representatives for months.

    Republican lawmakers have pushed for including a provision in a new agriculture appropriations bill that would allow schools to opt out of the nutrition standards if they could cite economic hardship.

    Critics have argued that kids would refuse to eat the vegetables and fruits, forcing thousand of pounds of food to be discarded.

    But the study found that 70% of elementary school students and middle schoolers reported liking the new lunch, while 63% of high school students also reported being in favor of the change.

    Initially more than half of elementary schools and high schools and 44% of middle schools reported that students complained about the new meals when they were first offered, but that acceptance increased over time.

    Schools with more lower-income students reported that purchases of the healthier meals rose, while schools with a larger proportion of students from higher-income households said that school lunch purchases decreased.

    Elementary and middle schools located in urban and suburban areas reported having fewer student complaints and less wasted food than schools in more rural locations.

    “When kids are offered healthy options and it is presented in a pleasing manner and the food is prepared well, they're certainly willing to accept it,” Turner said. “It does take some time for kids to accept those changes if it's not what they're used to, but if the healthy choice is not available, then the kid can't make the healthy choice.”

    Follow Steven Ross Johnson on Twitter: @MHsjohnson

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