School officials check trash to see what kids really eat

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — To determine what kids really eat at school, cafeteria workers here have come up with a modified version of dumpster diving.

They already knew what students ask for, what gets put on the tray, said Karen Hallford, Gwinnett County Schools coordinator of nutrition support and procurement. Last school year, Hallford and her staff decided to look at the leftovers to get to the root of the school nutrition problem.

"We randomly select trays as kids are finished with their meals, put them off to the side and then analyze," she said.

Hallford said her staff found some surprising results in the trash:

• Whole fruit is a popular choice, but students do not eat it. Now workers are giving wedges or slices of fresh fruit to see if what's served will be consumed.

• Cheese-stuffed pizza crusts ended up in the garbage, too, so schools here got rid of it and saved money.

Her results echo a study from researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, who watched 274 kindergarteners, first-graders and second-graders in 10 New York City public school cafeterias and noted their food selection and eating habits. While all the children took a milk and a whole grain on their trays, 59% chose a vegetable and 58% took fruit, only a quarter of the kids actually ate at least one bite of their veggies.

Johns Hopkins researchers also found that children were more likely to finish their food if a teacher ate in the cafeteria with them, when the noise level was low, if food was cut into smaller pieces and when lunchtime was longer.

The results from both studies are important not only to get nutritious food into kids' bodies but also because of the good food discarded: The National School Lunch Program served 5 billion meals in fiscal 2014, which was Oct. 1, 2013, to Sept. 30, 2014.

In Gwinnett County in the Atlanta metro area, Hallford's staff continues to do its own tests and is analyzing the results.

At 176,000 students, Gwinnett County Schools is the largest district in Georgia. More than two-thirds get lunch in the cafeteria instead of brown-bagging it from home, Hallford said. That's more than double the national average of 30%, according to figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Her schools' offerings include chicken nuggets with whole-grain breading, black-bean pizza, salad bars — even Brussels sprouts.

"At school, we're able to offer the kids a lot of variety that's really hard to pack inside of a lunchbox," Hallford said. "We want to keep it exciting and refreshing, and you know, get them into our cafes."

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