title: Impact of the new U.S. Department of Agriculture school meal standards on food selection, consumption, and waste.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently made substantial changes to the school meal standards. The media and public outcry have suggested that this has led to substantially more food waste.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  School meal selection, consumption, and waste were assessed before and after implementation of the new school meal standards.
  
  
  METHODS
  Plate waste data were collected in four schools in an urban, low-income school district. Logistic regression and mixed-model ANOVA were used to estimate the differences in selection and consumption of school meals before (fall 2011) and after implementation (fall 2012) of the new standards among 1030 elementary and middle school children. Analyses were conducted in 2013.
  
  
  RESULTS
  After the new standards were implemented, fruit selection increased by 23.0% and entrée and vegetable selection remained unchanged. Additionally, post-implementation entrée consumption increased by 15.6%, vegetable consumption increased by 16.2%, and fruit consumption remained the same. Milk selection and consumption decreased owing to an unrelated milk policy change.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Although food waste levels were substantial both pre- and post-implementation, the new guidelines have positively affected school meal selection and consumption. Despite the increased vegetable portion size requirement, consumption increased and led to significantly more cups of vegetables consumed. Significantly more students selected a fruit, whereas the overall percentage of fruit consumed remained the same, resulting in more students consuming fruits. Contrary to media reports, these results suggest that the new school meal standards have improved students' overall diet quality. Legislation to weaken the standards is not warranted.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts. Electronic address: jcohen@hsph.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Juliana F W
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Cohen
authors.affiliation: Project Bread, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Richardson
authors.affiliation: Project Bread, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Ellen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Parker
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Paul J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Catalano
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts; Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
authors.forename: Eric B
authors.initials: EB
authors.lastname: Rimm
mesh_terms: D004032:Diet / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005518:Food Preferences; D005522:Food Services / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005638:Fruit; D006801:Humans; D011203:Poverty; D012574:Schools / Q000592:standards* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014481:United States; D016885:United States Department of Agriculture / Q000592:standards; D014505:Urban Population; D014675:Vegetables; D014866:Waste Products / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
chemical_list: D014866:Waste Products