Longer lunch period encourages students to eat healthier meals, survey says

A recent study found that students in schools with shorter lunch periods tend to less and throw away more food than in schools where they have more time to eat.

The study, published Friday in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition of Dietetics, revealed that students with less than 20 minutes to eat school lunches consumed 13 percent less of their entrees, 12 percent less of their vegetables and 10 percent less of their milk than did students who had at least 25 minutes to eat.

Key findings revealed that students with a shorter lunch period had more food waste and were significantly less likely to select a fruit (44 percent versus 57 percent).

Also, arriving late to lunch or waiting in serving lines left a number of students with as little as 10 minutes to sit and eat. According to the study’s authors, strategies could be developed to move kids in a quicker manner through lunch lines, such as by adding more serving lines or setting up automated checkout systems.

Juliana Cohen—lead author of the study and adjunct assistant professor in the department of nutrition at Harvard University’s Chan School—surveyed 1,001 students in six elementary and middle schools in a low-income urban school district in Massachusetts. Their lunch periods ranged from 20 to 30 minutes in.

“Many children, especially those from low-income families, rely on school meals for up to half their daily energy intake so it is essential that we give students a sufficient amount of time to eat their lunches,” Cohen said in a statement.