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When children sit down for lunch at school, fruits and vegetables may not be their first choice. But with more time at the table for lunch, they are more likely to choose these healthy foods. If we’re going to improve children’s nutrition and health, providing longer school lunch breaks can help meet these goals, according to a University of Illinois study.
“Ten minutes of a sit-down lunch hour or less is quite common. The scheduled lunch time may be longer, but students must line up to get their food. And sometimes lunch times are shared with recess. This means the time children actually have to eat their meals is much shorter than the scheduled time, ”says Melissa Pflugh Prescott, assistant professor in the Department of Food Sciences and Human Nutrition at the U of I.
Prescott and study co-authors Xanna Burg, Jessica Metcalfe and Brenna Ellison compared eating fruits and vegetables for 10 and 20 minutes of a sit-down meal, and the results were clear.
“During the shorter lunch periods, the children ate significantly less fruits and vegetables in their meals, while there was no significant difference in the amount of drinks or appetizers they consumed. makes sense that you can eat the part of the meal you are watching. Go forward to the first one, and if you have enough time, you can move on to the other parts. But if there is not enough time , these items suffer and it’s usually fruits and vegetables, ”says Prescott.
This particularly affects children from low-income families who participate in the national school meals program and who may not have the resources to bring their own lunch from home to avoid waiting times for lunch. , she adds.
Prescott and his colleagues conducted the study with elementary and middle-aged children enrolled in a summer camp on the University of Illinois campus. The researchers set up the lunch area as a school cafeteria where the students would line up and choose their food. They prepared the meals according to the guidelines of the National School Lunch Program.
“We tried to make this as comparable as possible to the everyday school. We worked with the local school district and used the same food dispensers as them, and we selected the menu items based on the local public school menu, ”says Prescott.
Each day has been randomly assigned to be a short or a long lunch day. Each day of short lunch was paired with a long day of lunch with an identical menu. The researchers wanted to rule out that the types of foods served would create differences in what children ate.
Research assistants took a photo of each tray as the children exited the queue. They monitored the time from when children sat until they were finished eating and observed behavior throughout the meal, including any food sharing, peer interaction, and use. from the phone.
After lunch time was over, the children placed their tray with leftovers on a shelf and completed a two-question survey about the taste and appearance of their meal. The researchers measured all the portions before and after the meal to get an estimate of how much each child consumed.
While fruits were eaten at a higher overall rate than vegetables, the consumption of both types of food was significantly higher for longer sit-down breakfasts, Prescott says.
She notes that the study has implications for the effectiveness of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which the US government implemented in 2010 to improve nutritional standards for school meals.
“In my opinion, one of the best things about the new nutritional standards is that they require that a variety of vegetables be served each week, to ensure that children of all income and resource levels are exposed to it. different healthy foods that they might not have access to. But if we have lunch times that are too short for kids to get used to those foods, then we’re almost putting the policies in place, ”Prescott said.
“One of the main lessons from our study is that children need protected time to eat their fruits and vegetables. Our results support policies that require at least 20 minutes of sit-down lunch at school,” he says. she.
School lunchtime policies can be decided at the district level, with some room for individual schools to set their own standards; for example, schools may institute a longer lunch hour than the district mandates.
Prescott notes that longer lunch hours can also have benefits for children beyond healthy eating.
“The time children spend sitting is also a very valuable time for them to connect with their peers; they might have limited opportunities to do so throughout the school day. We found much less social interaction during the 10 minute lunch. This indicates that other positive results may also come from longer lunch breaks, ”she concludes.
The Department of Food Sciences and Human Nutrition is part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois.
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