Study: School lunches healthier at U.S. secondary schools following NSLP standards

A significant amount of secondary-school students attended schools with healthier lunches in the spring of 2013, the first year of updated school meal nutrition standards, as opposed to two years earlier, according to a new study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation—a healthcare advocacy group.

The study’s authors examined how schools implemented USDA nutrition standards for the 2012-13 school year by surveying administrators and foodservice staff at 948 public middle and high schools participating in the National School Lunch Program.

The study found that during the 2010-11 school year, 72 percent of middle-school students attended a school that offered non-fat milk every day. But after the national school-lunch standards were implemented two years later, that number jumped to  80 percent.

Other measures of healthy choices saw upticks as well. The number of middle-school students attending a school that offered whole grains daily increased 19 percentage points (11 points at the high-school level), and the number of those attending a school that offered both fruits and vegetables daily increased by 9 percentage points.

“School meals are getting healthier, and we found a marked improvement in the year immediately following the roll out of USDA’s updated standards,” said Yvonne Terry-McElrath, who works with Bridging The Gap, a research program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Some states and school districts have been working to offer healthier meals for years—our study shows that the national standards support those efforts and may be helping to close gaps that were leaving many students without access to nutritious school meals.”