TITLE:
A Pilot Study on the New USDA Meal Pattern for School Breakfast in a Sample of First-Grade Students
AUTHORS:
Noelle Carr, Sibylle Kranz
KEYWORDS:
School Breakfast; Meal Pattern; Intake Recommendation
JOURNAL NAME:
Food and Nutrition Sciences,
Vol.3 No.9,
September
12,
2012
ABSTRACT: Background: The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently modified the school breakfast program (SBP) to improve children’s nutrition. Based on the new patterns, schools must offer larger amounts of fruits, grains, and proteins/meats to children; the amounts of fluid foods (milk and juice) remained the same. This study examined the effect of the new food pattern on student’s consumption and food cost. Methods: The amounts and cost of foods served and wasted for one week in first grade students attending two elementary schools (n = 812) were measured. One school received the current SBP pattern (control breakfast, average number of students attending breakfast n = 81), the other school’s breakfast reflected the proposed changes (test breakfast, n = 82). To test the hypothesis that the test breakfast leads to significantly increased food cost and food waste compared to the control breakfast, the weekly average amount of the served solid and fluid foods (grams and milliliters) as well as their waste were compared between the two groups using paired student’s t-test in STATA 11 (significance at p-value