School Lunch Program

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The purpose of this literature review is to look into the efficiently of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and other regulated school programs. The National School Lunch Program is a federal assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools a residential child care institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low cost, or free lunches to children each school day. The program was established under the national school lunch act, signed by President Truman in 1946. Adding to this program the Food and Nutrition Service, USDA updated the meal patterns and nutrition standards for the National school lunch and school breakfast programs to align them with the dietary guidelines for Americans. This addition required …show more content…
Kubik (2003) set out to determine how things like vending machines, a la carte programs and fried potatoes being served at lunch all affected the dietary habits of these young students. Kubik used a cross sectional study design to measure the a la carte availability and the number of school stores, vending machines and amounts of fried potatoes served to students in 16 different schools. Through this study Kubik was able to find that “access to these vending machines and a la carte’s were inversely associated with fruit and vegetable consumption and positively associated with total and saturated fat intake. Whereas Fried potatoes being served at the school lunch was positively associated with vegetable and fruit intake.” (Kubik 1171) Conclusions reached were that these school programs that aim to promote healthy eating among youths show target the school level environmental factors. This was a great article to start off my review with as it was before the major implementations the New School lunch Program, it showed that there were other factors to go along with the unhealthy food that prevented the students from having better dietary …show more content…
Nicholson (2014) thought that state laws and farm to school programs have the potential to help increase fruit and vegetable availability in school meals. This would be a great addition to the already in place New School lunch program. This study examined whether fruits and vegetables were more available in public elementary school lunches in states which were required by laws to have FTSP’s. Roughly 50% of the schools reported fruit and vegetable availability in school lunches on most days of the week. Schools with the highest 70% were in states with laws and schools with FTSPs. Nicholson concluded that since this program has worked so well getting the nutrition to the schools the new school lunch program should be enacting more state legislation so that it may facilitate FTSP participation by schools and increase Fruits and vegetables in school meals. This program helps the New School lunch program become more efficient when it comes to the cost of getting these goods and transporting

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