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 “We were surprised, not that there was a difference in amounts of
fruits and vegetables that students took and consumed, but by the
size of the difference that placement had on students’ choices,”
said lead author Marc A. Adams of Arizona State University.
“Our study measured actual weights of food items and was not
affected by students’ perceptions or memories,” he added.
The researchers compared the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables
taken, consumed and wasted by 533 Phoenix area middle-school
students. Half of the students went to schools with salad bars in
the serving line before the point of purchase and half went to
schools where the salad bar was elsewhere in the cafeteria, after
the point of purchase.
The students went through the lunch line and selected their items as
usual, and when they were done getting food the researchers weighed
the fruit or vegetable items on their trays.
After lunch, the research staff collected student trays to measure
fruit and vegetable waste.
More than 98 percent of students at schools with salad bars in the
lunch line self-served some fruit or vegetables, compared to 23
percent of kids in other schools.
Those with salad bars in the line also consumed more than four times
more fruit and vegetables than other students, and threw more fruit
and vegetable items away, the research team reported in the Journal
of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
“A single cross-sectional study cannot definitively quantify the
difference salad bar position may make,” said Yvonne Terry-McElrath
of the University of Michigan.
“Clearly, both serving and consuming of (fruits and vegetables)
increased dramatically based on salad bar position in the Adams et
al. study, which is encouraging,” Terry-McElrath told Reuters Health
by email.
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“Based on our results, if schools have the space available, we
recommend that schools place salad bars inside of the lunch line in
the path of students before they pay,” Adams told Reuters Health by
email. “Once students exit the serving line, most will not seek out
additional opportunities to take fruits and vegetables because it
might mean breaking away from friends or navigating busy cafeterias
with short lunch periods; only highly motivated students will seek
out salad bars.”
Salad bar placement usually depends on the amount of space available
in the cafeteria, he said.
“There doesn't seem to be a downside to making changes like this,
but some school facilities will have a harder time than others,”
said Wendi Gosliner of the University of California, Agriculture and
Natural Resources Nutrition Policy Institute, who was not part of
the new study.
“If more evidence were to suggest that placement had this big of an
effect on students' consumption, that could warrant making even
difficult changes to move the salad bars,” Gosliner told Reuters
Health by email.
“The National School Lunch Program serves about 30 million students
daily, and if most schools adopted a default placement of salad bars
inside of the service line, millions of students could increase
their fruit and vegetable consumption each day,” Adams said.
“Placement is one of those simple modifications that can help nudge
students to make the best choices to improve their fruit and
vegetable intake without asking or telling them to do so.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1ReOdtJ Journal of the Academy of Nutrition
and Dietetics, online
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