Healthy school meals don’t reduce sales

By Lauren Radomski (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Monday, December 3, 2007

It was turkey gravy day in the Fergus Falls High School cafeteria Thursday, which meant one thing: long lunch lines.

Mashed potatoes, said cafeteria manager Becky Shearer, is among the school’s most popular foods, a sign that perhaps students are eating healthier during the day than people think — or are they?

“One day they might eat it,” she said of the hot lunch option, “and the next day...you never know.”

According to The Associated Press, researchers at the University of Minnesota are shedding light on school lunch patterns with a recent study published in the December issue of Agricultural Economics. Analyzing five years of data for 330 Minnesota public school districts, researchers found that school lunch sales don’t decline when healthier meals are served, and that more nutritious lunches don’t necessarily cost schools more to produce.

“The conventional wisdom that you can’t serve healthier meals because kids won’t eat them is false,” said Benjamin Senauer, one of three economists who wrote the study.

Previous studies have concluded that students prefer fatty foods and that healthier meals cost more to make, the authors noted.

The study looked at compliance with federal standards for calories, nutrients and fats, standards Shearer must meet when she designs lunch menus for the roughly 1,400 students the Fergus Falls school district serves daily. School-prepared meals for grades five through 12 must include two ounces of protein, eight ounces of fruit and vegetables and a bread product; six ounces of fruit and vegetables is required for younger students.

But whether or not students choose the hot lunch option over the ala carte menu — featuring a mix of sandwiches, pizza, chips and fresh vegetables — is ultimately the students’ choice.

“I think they need to learn to eat healthy at home before they eat (healthy) at school,” Shearer said.

The second part of the study, writes The Associated Press, addressed the cost to school districts of serving healthy versus less healthy meals.

While serving better meals does entail higher labor costs, the study found, that’s offset by lower costs for more nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables compared with processed foods.

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