Federal program can’t get kids to eat veggies

The Department of Agriculture has invested seven years and several million dollars in a popular program that claims it gets students to eat significantly more fruits and vegetables.

But as a recent critique of the research behind the program reveals, “significantly more” often means an amount as small as a single bite of an apple.

The critique, which was published on the academic platform PeerJ in August, alleges that researchers have exaggerated the benefits of a program that is now used as a model for healthy eating in schools. The critique is preliminary and has not been peer-reviewed.

The paper raises questions about the efficacy of the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement, which has been adopted by more than 30,000 schools across the U.S. since its launch in 2010. And it speaks volumes about the challenges of trying to get children (and adults) to improve their diets voluntarily.

In addition to the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement, the USDA has devoted millions of dollars to improving the nutrition of school meals and encouraging food-stamp recipients to buy more produce.

Both efforts produced results on par with a single bite of apple, said David Just, the co-director of Cornell University’s Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition, the research group that administers the Smarter Lunchrooms Movement.

Any nutrition intervention — including Smarter Lunchrooms — comes with striking limitations, Just acknowledges.

“The best we would hope for, under ideal conditions, is to get kids to eat some extra fraction of a serving of fruits or vegetables,” Just said.

Since 2010, the USDA-funded Smarter Lunchrooms program has often been held up as a model for persuading children to make healthier choices.

Using the principles of behavioral economics, a field that studies why people make decisions, Smarter Lunchrooms encourages school food service workers to make cosmetic changes that “nudge” students toward healthier choices. Administrators may place fruits in attractive baskets, for instance, or assign catchy names to vegetable dishes.

Schools that adopt these techniques can earn awards of up to $2,000 from USDA. More than $5.5 million in grants have also been earmarked for Smarter Lunchrooms training.

But the research methods employed by the Smarter Lunchrooms team have fallen under scrutiny, forcing Cornell to open an investigation into its practices this year.