By taking longer lunch breaks at school, a child could eat healthily and eat more fruits and vegetables. This is according to a new study in which a team of student workers prepared and served meals to school children. The results show that prolonged sitting while eating causes students toto consume more vitamins.
How parents can feed their children healthily
When children eat lunch at school, fruits and vegetables may not be their first choice. But with more time at the lunch table, they are more likely to reach for these healthy foods. If you want to improve your children's nutrition and health, ensuring longer lunch breaks at school can help achieve these goals. Ten minutes of sitting lunch time or less is quite common. Scheduled lunch time may be longer, but students will have to wait in line to get their food. The amount of time children actually have to eat their meals is much shorter than the planned time, the study authors said. They compared fruit and vegetable consumption during 10- and 20-minute sedentary lunch periods, and the results were clear.
During the shorter lunch breaks, children ate significantly less fruit and vegetable portions of their meals, although there was no significant difference in the amount of drinks or main dishes consumed. The researchers tried to do this in a similar way to everyday school life. They wanted to rule out that the foods offered would make a difference in the children's diet. While fruit was consumed more frequently overall than vegetables, the consumption of both types of food was significantly higher during longer lunch breaks. An important finding from this study is that children need protected time to eat their daily portion of vitamins. The study results support guidelines that require at least 20 minutes of sitting lunch breaks at school. During the 10-minute lunch break, the authorsthis studySignificantly fewer social interactions were also found. This suggests that other positive outcomes may also come from longer lunch breaks.
