Kids eating more fruits and vegetables thanks to healthier school meal standards

Kids are eating more fruits and vegetables thanks to the federally mandated change to school meal health standards in 2012, a new report found.

The study, from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), is the first to look at the difference in food consumption both before and after these healthier standards were put into place.

About 32 million kids get school lunches every day, and for many low-income household children, it supplies half of their daily food intake. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) aimed to improve the nutritional quality of school meals by making whole grains, fruits and vegetables more available, and discarding the meals that were previously high in sodium and saturated fats and low in whole grains and fiber. The new standards also require kids to select a fruit or vegetable, schools to increase the portion sizes of fruits and vegetables, remove trans fats, and place limits on total calories and sodium levels.

The researchers looked at data among 1,030 students from four different schools in urban, low-income school districts before and after the new guidelines were implemented. Once these criteria were enforced, kids chose fruit 23 percent more of the time and vegetable selection increased by 16.2 percent.

Despite the evidence, some people don't agree with the new healthier standards, including teachers, parents and food service providers - in part because they think it wastes more food. But while researchers report that students discarded roughly 60-75 percent of vegetables and 40 percent of fruit on their trays, they said they support the changes.

"There is a push from some organizations and lawmakers to weaken the new standards. We hope the findings, which show that students are consuming more fruits and vegetables, will discourage those efforts," said lead author Juliana Cohen, research fellow in the Department of Nutrition at HSPH, in a statement.

The authors recommend that schools improve their quality of food to reduce waste, noting that overall, the changes have been positive.

"The new school meal standards are the strongest implemented by the USDA to date, and the improved dietary intakes will likely have important health implications for children," they wrote.