What’s for Lunch?

Food service workers prepare meals for the school lunch program. Photo by Ken Hammond, USDA Agricultural Research Service Image Library, Image 03CN0713-4.

What’s on your child’s lunch tray? It depends on whether your child packs lunch or buys the full meal deal available under the National School Lunch Program.

Either way, the meal probably meets nutrition standards “almost entirely,” says Alisha Farris, lead author of a new study at Virginia Tech. The report appears in the November/December issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier.

Lunches brought from home were more likely to exceed recommendations for fat and saturated fat. They were also more likely to have dessert items, savory snacks, and sugar-sweetened drinks.

The researchers examined both types of school lunches for kids in preschool and kindergarten after implementation of the 2012-2013 National School Lunch Program standards. The results are mostly consistent with earlier studies that compared school lunch program and packed lunches for different grade levels.

“This is consistent with what we have seen,” says Beth Spinks, a registered dietitian and director of nutrition services for the Berea City School District in Ohio.

Yet while packed lunches on average came close to meeting nutrition standards, there was still a lot of variation in what was in those lunches. At one point Spinks asked a grad student to evaluate packed lunches brought by fifth graders in that school district.

“They were all over the place in nutrients,” Spinks says. Indeed, some lunches packed by students themselves “just had chips and cookies.”

To the extent school lunches fell short in the Virginia Tech study, it was generally on the energy and iron recommendations. When it comes to calories, kids don’t have to take all the items offered by school meal plans, and researchers were focusing on what kids actually had on their trays.

Just having food on their trays isn’t enough, though. Kids actually have to eat the food to get the nutritional value, and the Virginia Tech team recognized this as a limitation in their study. Thus, one recommendation it makes for future studies is to gather food waste data and compare consumption for packed and school lunches.

Spinks agrees this would be worthwhile.

“When we watch the garbage cans, we see a lot of food from both the packed and purchased lunches being thrown away,” she says. “We need to figure out why. Planning a great lunch does nothing if the child does not eat it.”

Meanwhile, the study could be helpful to promote school meals and give parents suggestions for packing lunches, she notes.

And nutrition isn’t the only thing parents should focus on if they pack lunches for themselves or children. Food safety matters too, stresses Spinks.

Now there’s another topic for research….

 

 

Read, Plan, Prep, and Indulge

Large dinner salad with steamed clams, drizzled with citrus balsamic olive oil. Photo (c) Kathiann M. Kowalski.

Despite lots of local stores hawking Halloween candy, my husband and I are continuing our healthy eating habits from summer into fall. And no, I’m not viewing this as a diet. Rather, it’s an adventure in living the good life.

Fortunately, there are lots of awesome fresh fruits and vegetables still available at both groceries and local markets. Better still, today’s food stores carry a wide array of foods from around the world.

So, yes, I am reading labels–a lot. In particular, I’m checking out sodium, carb, sugar, and calorie info.

Especially for sodium, it’s clear that the best way to stay within recommended guidelines is to cook more meals from scratch at home. Doing that helps keep refined sugars and calories in check too.

On the other hand, life gets busy. To do things most efficiently, I try to plan ahead. I cooked twice as much salmon today at lunch so I could save some to top a salad tomorrow or Friday. A couple of chicken breasts roasted next to them at the same time, to make sandwiches or other meals through the weekend.

I don’t plan too much, though. When it comes to cooking styles, I might read recipes for ideas or basic info, such as how long meat or fish should generally cook or how to handle a whole bulb of fennel or a blob of celery root.

Beyond that, though, I mainly improvise. Among the nutritional gatekeeper cooking styles described by Cornell University’s Brian Wansink, I’d count myself among the 19 percent who are “innovative cooks.”

Wansink, who heads up the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, surveyed hundreds of domestic cooks. All were ranked as “great cooks” by themselves and at least one other adult family member.

The resulting study, published in 2003, identified five different styles of cooks: giving cooks, healthy cooks, innovative cooks, methodical cooks, and competitive cooks.

Wansink’s point was that knowing about the different styles could lead to tailoring nutrition education. The information could also provide clues about who might be early adapters when it came to trying and promoting different types of food.

But the best part of this whole innovative healthy food lifestyle isn’t the planning and prep. It’s the eating!

And tonight for supper, I had a large low-sodium, low calorie, and thoroughly yummy salad topped with steamed clams and drizzled with a tablespoon of citrus balsamic olive oil. As Julia Child and Julie Powell would both say, “Bon appetit!”

I Can Has Salmon Burger?

Despite vegetarianism becoming more and more popular, a press release today seems to champion eating animal protein—at least for older people. “Diets High in Animal Protein May Help Prevent Functional Decline in Elderly Individuals,” it says.

I wonder if this could this be the Holy Grail that meat lovers like my husband have been waiting for: a blessing to indulge because animal protein is good for you.

I also think of the famous meme showing a hopeful cat and the caption, “I can has cheezburger?”

Although it was originally embargoed until March 13, an email this afternoon now says the embargo has been lifted “effective immediately.” The full paper has been published online by the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, explains the email. But the import seems to say that this is news that should be broadcast now. And yup, I was curious.

The study looked at diet and health factors for more than 1,000 elderly Japanese people living in the community. After seven years, the men in the highest quartile for eating animal protein had a 39-percent lower chance of experiencing high-level functional decline than the quartile that ate the least animal protein.

“Along with other modifiable health behaviors, keeping high protein intake could contribute to maintain elderly functional capacity,” study co-author Megumi Tsubota Utsugi said in the press release. She’s at the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan. Other study co-authors are at Japan’s Tohoku University and Teikyo University.

Sounds good for cheeseburger lovers, right? Not quite.

Apparently, being in the top quartile for eating fish was linked to the lower health risks for decline. “[W]hereas meat intake was not associated,” says the study.

On the other hand, the study didn’t say not to eat cheeseburgers at all. I know a lot of folks who will take comfort in that.

In any case, it seems salmon burgers are good for you. And a grilled tuna sandwich could hit the spot too.

Then again, there’s a whole range of concerns about sustainable fishing practices, environmental pollution, and other factors. When I interviewed Steve Teo at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last year, he said he often refers people to different “fish watch” lists, such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch recommendations. “That’s a reasonably good source,” he told me.

It’s also important to note that the new study from the Japanese researchers found a statistical association. And an association is not necessarily the same as causation. In this case, the researchers note, men who ate less animal protein also tended to have a less healthy diet overall.

Also, the association was not seen in women. The different results between men and women weren’t entirely explained. However, the study notes, one factor there might be the relative degrees of muscle mass preservation.

From my perspective, I guess the bottom line is to eat a generally healthy diet. And, I suppose, I should keep up the regular exercise regimen too.

At least I got a walk in today, along with a weight workout at the gym. But maybe I’ll order something other than a cheeseburger when I go out tonight.

When the weather finally gets warmer and we’re barbecuing outside, though, that’s a whole other story.