Study: Kids will eat healthy school food

[isilzha]

Study: Kids will eat healthy school food

By STEVE KARNOWSKI, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 46 minutes ago

Maybe getting schoolchildren to eat healthy foods isn't a hopeless struggle.
Bucking some common notions, a University of Minnesota study has 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, which appears in the December issue of the Review of Agricultural Economics, analyzed five years of data for 330 Minnesota public school districts. It looked at compliance with federal standards for calories, nutrients and fats.


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[Lucy]

I don't have kids yet, but I am very glad that school lunches are improving. I remember when I was in school, they served absolute crap for lunch. In middle and high school, you could buy Taco Bell burritos or eat nothing but mozzarella sticks, fried chicken nuggets, or mystery meat. I'm glad that it is getting better so that I don't have to worry as much when I do have kids and send them to school.

I am a firm believer that if you teach your kids from a young age to eat relatively healthy, then they will grow up to be healthy eaters. If you serve them healthy dinners early on and don't take them to McDonalds on a daily basis, then they won't know any better. Now, I don't have kids so I could just be talking out my rear here, but I grew up not realizing that there were options outside of what my mom cooked. She cooked nightly and we either ate it or starved. Today, so many families survive on convenience food it's no wonder that kids prefer to eat the junk food.

I'll step off my soapbox over here and quit pretending that I know what I'm talking about.