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What Makes Students Buy Lunch? The Newest USDA Study Takes a Look
You would think that students eligible for free meals would show up in the lunch line every day. If they don’t have to pay, they should be guaranteed customers for school cafeterias, right?
Not exactly. Meal program directors say a good number of those students still bring lunch from home, and a new study by the USDA’s Economic Research Service confirms that, with findings that eligible students take advantage of their free or reduced-price meal on only 70 percent of eating occasions.
That’s bad news for cafeterias, since their funding comes from per-meal reimbursement. School meal programs receive $2.57 for every free meal they serve, $2.17 for every reduced-price meal and $0.24 for every paid meal. If only some of the eligible students come in for a meal, lunchrooms miss out on a lot of money. And with fixed labor costs, cafeterias are economies of scale. They’re better off putting out 5,000 meals than 3,000.
So why aren’t students eating school lunch? The ERS study points to a number of factors that affect participation in the National School Lunch Program. Elementary schoolers are significantly more likely to eat school lunch than their older counterparts. Students are also more likely to eat in the cafeteria if their school uses an electronic point-of-sale system. This may simply be more convenient, or it may reduce the stigma of receiving a free meal. In addition, young students are more likely to participate in the NSLP if there is an employed adult in their household, probably because employed parents have less time to pack lunch for their children.
Not surprisingly, the study found that kids are much more likely to eat school meals if they like the taste. Among students eligible for free or reduced meals, students who were very satisfied with the taste of school lunch were 5 percent more likely to buy a meal than students who were somewhat satisfied and 8 percent more likely to buy than students who were dissatisfied. The study found that students’ overall satisfaction with meal quality and parents’ satisfaction with meal healthfulness were also tied to higher participation, but to a lesser degree.
The ERS study also found that free meals bring more students into the cafeteria than reduced-price meals. The researchers looked at data from students who were given the wrong certification status due to administrative error or inaccurate reports of household income. They found that students who received free meals even though they were only qualified to receive reduced-price meals claimed meals on 13 percent more occasions than students who were correctly classified as reduced-price students. These numbers add to the case to remove the reduced-price category and provide free meals to all low-income students. Still, the authors of the study project that this would cost $421.5 million, and it’s unlikely that Congress will embrace that in this year’s child nutrition reauthorization.
The results of the ERS study shed light on the importance of student participation in the National School Lunch Program and some of the problems that come with that. At this point, both cafeterias and the federal government have an incentive to keep kid-friendly fare like chicken nuggets and pizza on school lunch menus. Cafeterias need the popular foods so they can serve the maximum number of meals and receive as many reimbursements as possible. And the government, which tends to see school lunch as a welfare program and spends over $7 billion per year to ensure that low income students get a midday meal, wants to make sure those kids actually eat. If the food on their trays ends up in the trash, that’s a big waste of Americans’ tax dollars.
Giving kids the foods they like best may have been a good strategy back when the National School Lunch Program was launched. But these days, with kids asking for fast-food fare in the midst of an obesity epidemic, it’s time to rethink the program. Participation is important, yes. But we need to find a way to restructure the incentives so that it doesn’t take precedence over nutrition and nutrition education.
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