Sen. Tom Harkin stated that the school lunch program is an opportunity “to make a lasting impact on the nutrition and eating habits” of the nation’s children. Two-thirds of the nation’s elementary schools serve meals that exceed the recommended amount of saturated fat content. Harkin suggested that schools phase out food items with little or no nutritional value and instead introduce no-fat milk, lean meats, whole grain products and fresh produce in their meals.
Archive for category School nutrition
The name game works!
Mar 10
Giving vegetables cool names, like “X-Ray Vision Carrots” nearly doubled how much preschoolers took and ate — even days later they ate 50% more. Enjoy this free chapter from MINDLESS EATING by Brian Wansink.
Smarter Lunchrooms.org
Mar 10
A new website that launched this week: smarterlunchrooms.org. Its goal is to design sustainable lunchrooms that guide smarter choices. Simply replacing pizza with whole-wheat flatbreads and fries with roasted sweet potatoes doesn’t allow kids to learn how to make real-world choices, says David Just, from Cornell University. We set it up so that everything is available and the kids are enabled to see how to make decisions. Making those decisions, he says, leads to good habits.
Be smart eat fish
Mar 10
Fifteen-year-old males who ate fish at least once a week displayed higher cognitive skills at the age of 18 than those who ate it less frequently, according to a Swedish study of nearly 4,000 teenagers published in the March issue of Acta Paediatrica. Eating fish once a week was enough to increase combined, verbal and visuospatial intelligence scores by an average of 6%, while eating fish more than once a week increased them by just under 11%. Researchers compared the responses of 3,972 males who took part in the survey with the cognitive scores recorded in their Swedish Military Conscription records three years later.
National Policy & Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN) in the US just released two model school district policies to address food and beverage advertising on school grounds. One not permitting junk food to be sold on school grounds and one restricting advertising on school grounds. They also developed a fact sheet and a legal memo on the First Amendment implications of restricting advertising in schools. Parents, school officials, and advocates may download and use these materials for free.
The focus of the report is on measurable effects of breakfast on behaviour and learning. Including the effect of relatively short dietary interventions on specific cognitive functions such as memory and attention. It appears that the largest beneficial effect may be observed in children with the poorest habitual diet. This group may also be expected to benefit most from interventions such as the provision of school meals. The report was prepared by researchers from University of Copenhagen and it has a short English summary.
This study examined the importance of school environment in Danish data from the European 2003 Pro Children Survey. Most of the total variance in students’ f&v intake occurred at the individual level (93-98%). The small school-level effects on 11-year-olds’ fruit and vegetable intake imply that family level interventions may be more important and that the success of school interventions will rely on the degree of parental involvement.
Assessment urges more veggies plus restrictions on unhealthy options. Find a series of articles in a supplement to the February issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
Today bill that would get junk foods out of schools once and for all was introduced. The bill is likely to be addressed when Congress reauthorizes the Child Nutrition Act, which expires this year.
The qualitative and quantitative content of 4,365 meals theoretically available and 330 meals consumed was recorded during five weekdays spread over three weeks in a Belgian university canteen. To ensure overall compliance with dietary recommendations, considerable changes on the supply side, i.e. an increase in fruit and vegetable portions and a reduction in salt and fat of the lunch, are needed first in this setting.