Research Article
Impact of the New U.S. Department of Agriculture School Meal Standards on Food Selection, Consumption, and Waste

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2013.11.013Get rights and content

Background

The U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently made substantial changes to the school meal standards. The media and public outcry have suggested that this has led to substantially more food waste.

Purpose

School meal selection, consumption, and waste were assessed before and after implementation of the new school meal standards.

Methods

Plate waste data were collected in four schools in an urban, low-income school district. Logistic regression and mixed-model ANOVA were used to estimate the differences in selection and consumption of school meals before (fall 2011) and after implementation (fall 2012) of the new standards among 1030 elementary and middle school children. Analyses were conducted in 2013.

Results

After the new standards were implemented, fruit selection increased by 23.0% and entrée and vegetable selection remained unchanged. Additionally, post-implementation entrée consumption increased by 15.6%, vegetable consumption increased by 16.2%, and fruit consumption remained the same. Milk selection and consumption decreased owing to an unrelated milk policy change.

Conclusions

Although food waste levels were substantial both pre- and post-implementation, the new guidelines have positively affected school meal selection and consumption. Despite the increased vegetable portion size requirement, consumption increased and led to significantly more cups of vegetables consumed. Significantly more students selected a fruit, whereas the overall percentage of fruit consumed remained the same, resulting in more students consuming fruits. 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.

Section snippets

Background

In the U.S., schools provide government-subsidized meals to roughly 32 million students daily.1 Until recently, the nutrition standards for the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program were based on outdated 1995 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.2 In general, meals were high in sodium, saturated fats, and low in whole grains and fiber.3 In response to these issues and the First Lady’s Let’s Move! campaign to promote child health, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger‐Free Kids

Methods

Project Modifying Eating and Lifestyles at School (MEALS) was a school-based study developed by the nonprofit organization Project Bread (www.ProjectBread.org) and the Harvard School of Public Health. In 2011, Project Bread hired a professional chef to work with several schools in a low-income, urban school district in Massachusetts to enhance the palatability and nutrient profile of the school meals. Additionally, some schools received a behavioral psychology intervention to influence the

Intervention

At the beginning of the 2012−2013 school year, the new school meal standards went into effect in schools participating in the National School Breakfast and National School Lunch Programs (Table 1). This resulted in a natural experiment in the middle of data collection for the Project MEALS study.

Although there were some similarities between the old and new school meal standards, there were many important updates as well. Schools must continue to offer five components to students at lunch: a

Results

At baseline, the participating schools met the previous USDA school meal standards and at follow-up were compliant with the new requirements for all food groups and nutrient standards, with the exception of one vegetable offering (the portion size offered on the study day was only 0.5 cup). Table 2 shows the percentage of students that selected each meal component pre- and post-implementation of the new standards. There were no changes in entrée selection, with all students selecting this meal

Discussion

The impact of the new USDA Nutrition Standards in the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program on school meal selection and consumption was examined. Contrary to public concerns, the new school meal standards did not lead to increases in meal waste for entrées, fruits, or vegetables in this urban, low-income population. Entrée and vegetable selection remained unchanged, and their overall consumption increased significantly. The increase in portion size for vegetables also resulted in more

References (18)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (0)

View full text
Copyright © 2014 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.