Middle schoolers without a la carte options ate nearly an entire extra daily
serving of fruits and vegetables and stayed within the U.S. Department of
Agriculture’s
guidelines for total daily fat consumption, according to Martha Y. Kubik,
Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota and colleagues.
“Our results suggest that the primarily high-fat snacks and calorie-dense
beverages offered and sold to students via a la carte programs are displacing
fruits and vegetables in the diets of young teens,” Kubik and colleagues
say.
Campus snack vending machines can also make a difference in daily fruit
consumption, the researchers found. For each snack vending machine present
in the schools,
students’ average daily fruit consumption dropped by 11 percent.
An increasing number of schools are offering a la carte and vending options
along with more traditional lunches, according to Kubik and colleagues, who
note that the school environment can have a powerful influence on students’ eating
behaviors.
“Interestingly, this metamorphosis in the school environment has occurred
during a time when deliberate national effort has been expended to improve
the nutritional health of the U.S. population,” Kubik and colleagues
say.
The researchers collected information on the lunch options and eating habits
of seventh-grade students at 16 schools in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area. Thirteen
of the schools had a la carte programs and seven schools had snack vending
machines that could be used by students.
Kubik and colleagues also examined the nutritional content of the foods that
were sold through each of these venues, separating them into high-fat and lower-fat
groups.
In the 13 a la carte programs, 84 percent of the foods offered and 93 percent
of the foods sold were items that fell into the high-fat “foods to limit” category.
In the vending machines, nearly four out of every five snacks offered was
in the high-fat category.
The researchers also looked at whether serving fried potatoes in school
lunches would affect students’ fruit and vegetable intake. They concluded that
fried potatoes at lunch did increase the students’ average fruit and
vegetable intake. But they also noted that fried potatoes represented more
than half of all vegetable servings served to students within the school
lunches.
Kubik and colleagues say that more low-cost and healthy items should be
added to a la carte menus, and that schools should consider policies to limit
students’ access
to high-fat snacks and sweetened drinks.
“Young people spend considerable time at school, and attention to the
food options and opportunities available to students at school is clearly warranted
if healthy eating is to become normal childhood behavior,” the researchers
write.
The study was published in the July issue of the American
Journal of Public Health and supported by the National Cancer Institute.
