| Direct regulation of school lunch content seems an intuitive approach for improving the nutrition of many American children. However, little is known about substitution patterns in response to such efforts, particular the likelihood that children and parents will turn to competitive foods outside the control of schools such as packed lunches. To our knowledge, no previous work documents if increasing the healthfulness of school lunches leads children to leave the school lunch line for potentially less nutritious options. To address this paucity of information we estimate the demand for school lunches as a function of calories provided and entrée protein source for a single elementary school. Our results suggest a highly inelastic response to a meal’s... |
