Study: Lunch after recess prompts kids to eat more fruits, veggies

For decades, school lunch ladies have been puzzling over how to get kids to eat their fruits and vegetables. They've tried growing produce on campus and challenging kids to come up with their own recipes. They've even tried paying students to clean their plates.

Now a small-scale study in Utah suggests a simpler solution, one that even mom would love: Why not simply move lunchtime so that it falls after recess?

The new study, appearing in the February issue of the journal Preventive Medicine, shows that waiting until after recess to feed kids increases per-child fruit and veggie consumption by 54% and prompts 45% more students to eat any fruits or vegetables at all. The authors theorize that not only are students hungrier after recess, they're also not as rushed to be "done" with lunch so they can maximize playtime.

Previous research has shown that waiting until after recess to serve lunch prompts kids to eat more and waste less overall. It also makes the lunchroom a calmer, more orderly place.

Researchers from Brigham Young University (BYU) and Cornell University studied first- through sixth-graders at seven schools in Orem, Utah, near Salt Lake City. The school district was in the process of switching the lunch/recess order in some schools, and the researchers realized that the switch presented an opportunity to see if it made a difference in children's fruit and vegetable consumption habits.

"This put us in a unique position to evaluate the impact of a changing recess before lunch since we were already collecting data at the schools making the change as well as some very similar schools nearby," says BYU's Joseph Price. Price and colleague David Just, a behavioral economist at Cornell, were concerned that many students from low-income families who weren't eating fruits and vegetables at home might be repeating the pattern with lunch at school.

"This was a natural fit with our prior work looking at what motivates kids to eat more nutritious foods," says Just.

The pair recorded how many ounces of fruits and vegetables students threw out and found that students who came in from recess to a tray of food wasted less than when they ate first and played later. Students in the control group, where the lunch/recess order wasn't switched, actually ate slightly fewer fruits and vegetables during the duration of the study.

Recent federal guidelines have essentially forced schools to put more fruits and vegetables on kids' trays, but Just says this alone isn't enough to motivate kids to eat them.

"It's not always what's on the tray that matters," he says. "Sometimes it's what you were doing before or after lunch that makes the difference."