Considering most children spend a majority of their weekdays at school and, on average, obtain more than one-third of their daily caloric intake from meals consumed at school during the school year, school is a natural place to implement nutrition policies that would help develop healthy eating habits and improve health and well-being of children. At the same time, local school meal policies may influence what foods are offered and how the foods are prepared. In this regard, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) two school meal programs can play an important role in children’s diets and food habit formation and thus positively influence children’s health. The focus of our research is children’s intakes of fruits and vegetables by location of... |