![]() “Especially those older kids, it’s hard to get the academics in,” she said. Participating in the pilot program was voluntary, and Jones was eager to give it a try.Įven though her teachers appreciate the value of giving students more time to run around and eat, losing 15 minutes of instruction time leaves them feeling a bit squeezed. The five minutes Trailside allocated for transitioning from recess to lunch remained the same. Lunch period was increased from 20 to 25 minutes, while recess time was upped from 20 to 30 minutes. The Anchorage school district started the pilot program just this year-in response to a petition from parents. “The nutrition piece is a very valuable piece in getting the child educated.” Balancing Breaks With InstructionĪt Trailside Elementary, it’s too early to tell what the effects of the slightly longer lunch periods will be, but so far Jones has received positive feedback from students, teachers, and especially parents. “We have to work together on this as a whole community,” Anderson said. ![]() Proper nutrition helps prepare students for test-taking, said Anderson, and also means fewer students visiting the school nurse for ailments caused by hunger such as headaches. “Research suggests that when students eat healthier food it is associated with improved executive functioning-working memory, impulse control, everything we think of when we think of making a student successful,” said Cohen. Experts like Anderson and Cohen said that principals shouldn’t view lunch and instructional time as an either-or proposition-lunch doesn’t take away from academics, it enhances them. They especially need that time to eat their food.”īut when it comes to setting the daily schedule, lunch time is frequently whittled away in order to provide more instructional time. “And they also rely on school meals for half of their daily calorie intake. “They are more likely to receive a school meal and they will be standing in that line,” said Cohen. Too-short lunch periods disproportionately harm low-income students for whom school lunch may be their most reliable and hearty meal of the day. Seventeen percent of students in Cohen’s study had even less time-under 15 minutes-to eat. Students were also much less likely to select fruit for their meal. They ate 13 percent less of their entrees, 12 percent less of their vegetables, and drank 10 percent less of their milk, Cohen found. Sixty-five percent of the students in the study had less than 20 minutes to eat their lunch and those students consumed significantly less of their entrees, vegetables, and milk compared to students who had at least 25 minutes to eat. Cohen reckons students need at least 25 minutes of seat time. That’s what she found in a 2015 study when she analyzed 1,000 students in a low-income, urban school in Massachusetts during their lunch periods. Students who get less than 20 minutes to eat leave a lot of food uneaten on their trays, said Juliana Cohen, a public health and nutrition professor at Merrimack College and Harvard University’s school of public health. Department of Agriculture to officially recommend just that, citing research on students’ eating patterns and nutritional needs. The School Nutrition Association is lobbying the U.S. “When you think about eating an apple versus a canned pear-those types of textures, those things make a difference.”Īt minimum, students need 20 minutes to sit and eat, said Anderson, excluding time walking to the cafeteria and standing in line. ![]() “Across the country we’re hearing, a lot of those fresh fruits and veggies, which are great to add to our program, need more time to consume,” said Anderson. Pair that with the fact that federal standards for healthy school lunches have tightened up, and students simply aren’t left enough time to chew all those fibrous fruits and vegetables, said Anderson, who is also the director of nutrition at the Brandon Valley school district in South Dakota. ![]()
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