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The School Lunch Top Ten
The NPD group, a market research firm that tracks Americans’ eating habits, has put together a list of the top 10 foods children ages 6 to 12 eat for lunch at school. The good news is that fruits and vegetables are both in the top five. The bad news is that French fries, pizza and cookies also make the cut.
Here’s the complete list for lunches purchased at school:
1. Milk, half of which is chocolate
2. Sandwiches
3. Fruit
4. Fruit drinks
5. Vegetables
6. Pizza
7. Chicken
8. French fries
9. Fruit salad
10. Cookies
And, for comparison, here’s the list of the top 10 lunch items brought from home:
1. Sandwiches
2. Fruit
3. Salty snacks
4. Fruit drinks
5. Cookies
6. Milk
7. Vegetables
8. Fruit snacks
9. Yogurt
10. Crackers
It would be interesting to see how this compares to the top 10 for high school students, who typically have more choices in the cafeteria. I also wonder what counts as a vegetable here. For example, schools spend a quarter of their commodity dollars on fruits and vegetables, but 35 percent of that money goes to potatoes.
August 19th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
As a registered dietitian, I am so happy to see that fruits and vegetables made the top 5, but it’s still disappointing that the schools are serving french fries, pizza, and cookies to the extent that they end up in the top 10. Not that salty snacks, fruit drinks, and cookies brought from home are much better. Parents need to be better educated on healthy foods to send their kids to school with to get them through the afternoon.
August 20th, 2009 at 12:19 am
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August 25th, 2009 at 8:05 am
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