Salad bars in school cafeterias boost students’ dietary quality, new VCU study finds

By Sian Wilkerson

A new study from researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University shows that when it comes to improving school-age children's nutrition, salad bars can play a big role.

"Schools are a major source of children's dietary intake," said Melanie Bean, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Medicine's Department of Pediatrics and co-director of the Healthy Lifestyles Center, part of Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU. In the study, "we showed that school salad bars do help improve fruit intake and overall dietary quality."

Proponents say school salad bars promote improved nutritional intake both through increased accessibility and by allowing students to make their own choices. Yet prior to this study, there was little data to back up these claims. Bean and a team of researchers from several universities, including Suzanne Mazzeo, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Psychology in VCU's College of Humanities and Sciences, conducted an evaluation of school salad bars in a large Virginia school district for the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The team also included Hollie Raynor, Ph.D., a professor with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Laura Thornton, Ph.D., a professor with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Lilian de Jonge, Ph.D., a professor with George Mason University.

They randomly selected 14 matched schools - seven with salad bars and seven without - to compare students' dietary intake before and after salad bars were installed in one of each school pair. To do this, researchers took photos of students' lunches before and after they ate to determine what they selected, ate and then threw away. Their findings showed that students at schools with salad bars had healthier dietary intake compared with students at schools without.

"This is important, given the role of dietary intake on chronic disease risk," Bean said. "Fruits and vegetables are essential for healthy growth in children and play an important role in disease prevention."

Every day, the National School Lunch Program feeds 30 million children, playing a large role in feeding children from low-income families or who identify as a racial or ethnic minority. Following the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which mandated more fruits and vegetables in NSLP meals, many school cafeterias installed salad bars to help address this goal.

Now, Bean said, there is data to back up their efficacy.

"It's important to make sure that time and resources spent are meeting their intended purpose," she said.

Following the study, her team's goal is to see how to build on the success of salad bars and also increase students' vegetable intake specifically through new strategies.

"School meal participation is linked to improved attendance, reduced food insecurity and better academic outcomes, in addition to health outcomes such as reduction in obesity," Bean said. "Given the vast scale of the NSLP, it is important that we continue to evaluate how we can optimize the potential of school meals for children."

It is also crucial to ensure that school nutrition departments have adequate resources, Bean added.

"Nutritious food is vital to academic success," she said. "I hope that Virginia lawmakers make universal free meals a priority for our children, as we continue to investigate additional strategies, such as school salad bars, to support nutrition in children."