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Alignment Of US School Lunches With The EAT-Lancet Healthy Reference Diet's Standards For Planetary Health.

ABSTRACT: By feeding more than thirty million schoolchildren daily, the National School Lunch Program's food offerings substantially influence a contributing factor to climate change: US food production methods. Modifying school lunch nutrition standards could be a policy strategy to reduce climate change while promoting human health. To estimate how school lunches could be adjusted to encourage both outcomes, we compared the composition of school lunches with the EAT-Lancet Commission's healthy reference diet science-based benchmarks for reducing food system impacts on climate change. Analyzing more than 5,000 lunches served in the US during school year 2014-15, we found that they exceeded EAT-Lancet targets for dairy, fruit, refined grains, red meat, and starchy vegetables while containing insufficient whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and nuts. In addition, estimated food costs were higher for school lunches than for lunches meeting EAT-Lancet targets. Our findings suggest that redesigning school lunches could provide high-quality nutrition while benefiting the environment and reducing food costs.

SUBMITTER: Poole MK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8318070 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Alignment Of US School Lunches With The EAT-Lancet Healthy Reference Diet's Standards For Planetary Health.

Poole Mary Kathryn MK Musicus Aviva A AA Kenney Erica L EL

Health affairs (Project Hope) 20201201 12

By feeding more than thirty million schoolchildren daily, the National School Lunch Program's food offerings substantially influence a contributing factor to climate change: US food production methods. Modifying school lunch nutrition standards could be a policy strategy to reduce climate change while promoting human health. To estimate how school lunches could be adjusted to encourage both outcomes, we compared the composition of school lunches with the EAT-Lancet Commission's healthy reference ...[more]

PMID: 33284707

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Project description:BackgroundKnowledge on the association between the EAT-Lancet Planetary Health Diet (PHD) or the Finnish Nutrition recommendations (FNR) and anthropometric changes is scarce. Especially, the role of the overall diet quality, distinct from energy intake, on weight changes needs further examination.ObjectivesTo examine the association between diet quality and weight change indicators and to develop a dietary index based on the PHD adapted for the Finnish food culture.MethodsThe study population consisted of participants of two Finnish population-based studies (n = 4,371, 56% of women, aged 30-74 years at baseline). Dietary habits at the baseline were assessed with a validated food frequency questionnaire including 128-130 food items. We developed a Planetary Health Diet Score (PHDS) (including 13 components) and updated the pre-existing Recommended Finnish Diet Score (uRFDS) (including nine components) with energy density values to measure overall diet quality. Weight, height, and waist circumference (WC), and the body mass index (BMI) were measured at the baseline and follow-up, and their percentual changes during a 7-year follow-up were calculated. Two-staged random effects linear regression was used to evaluate β-estimates with 95% confidence intervals.ResultsAdherence to both indices was relatively low (PHDS: mean 3.6 points (standard deviation [SD] 1.2) in the range of 0-13; uRFDS: mean 12.7 points (SD 3.9) in the range of 0-27). We did not find statistically significant associations between either of the dietary indices and anthropometric changes during the follow-up (PHDS, weight: β -0.04 (95% CI -0.19, 0.11), BMI: β 0.05 (-0.20, 0.10), WC: β -0.08 (-0.22, 0.06); uRFDS, weight: β 0.01 (-0.04, 0.06), BMI: β 0.01 (-0.04, 0.06), WC: β -0.02 (-0.07, 0.03)).ConclusionNo associations between overall diet quality and anthropometric changes were found, which may be at least partly explained by low adherence to the PHD and the FNR in the Finnish adult population.

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Alignment Of US School Lunches With The EAT-Lancet Healthy Reference Diet's Standards For Planetary Health.

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Alignment Of US School Lunches With The EAT-Lancet Healthy Reference Diet's Standards For Planetary Health.

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