Evaluating Federal nutrition policies for school meals: Findings from the School Nutrition Dietary Assessment study-III (SNDA-III)

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP) are the primary federal nutrition programs operating in schools, feeding over 29 million schoolchildren each day. In the mid-1990s, after the School Nutrition Dietary Assessment-I (SNDA-I) study found that school lunches contained high levels of fat and saturated fat, Congress and USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) set new nutrition standards for the NSLP and SBP. These standards formed the basis for the 1995 School Meals Initiative for Healthy Children (SMI), which required that schools serve meals consistent with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans goals for calories from fat and saturated fat, with reduced amounts of sodium and cholesterol and more fiber, and with key RDA nutrients. Other policy components of SMI added flexibility for planning meals that offer more fruits, vegetables, and grains, and less whole milk.

To measure the influence of SMI policies, FNS recently sponsored the School Nutrition Dietary Assessment-III (SNDA-III) study, the only nationally representative sample of the nutritional quality of school meals and their contribution to children's diets. This presentation will describe the foods and nutrients in school meals offered to students relative to SMI nutrition standards, and schools' progress toward meeting SMI nutrition standards since 1992.