When it comes to healthy eating, cafeteria managers may not be doing all they can to help improve a child's eating habits.

A new study, however, finds that changing the cafeteria environment could help students eat their vegetables, according to an article on Today.com. 

“While nearly 7 out of 10 school kids put a vegetable on their lunch trays, only about half of them took even one bite of it, according to a new study of 274 kindergarteners through second-graders at 10 New York City public schools,” the article said.

Reducing noise and making other changes to the menu, and cafeteria environment, the article said, “can make a big difference, suggests the study from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.”

“I was surprised by how much of an impact environmental factors had on healthy eating,” said lead author Susan Gross, a research associate at the university. These young students, Today.com said, “were much more likely to finish their veggies when the cafeteria was quieter and to consume more of all their food if a teacher ate with them in the cafeteria, the lunch period was longer, and their food was cut up.”

“If you’re a first-grader and you’ve recently lost most of your teeth, it’s very hard to eat a whole apple,” Gross said.

A study of middle-schoolers last year, the article said, “estimated that students could waste as much as $1.2 billion annually of their school lunches, which have been overhauled in recent years to be healthier. Students threw away almost half of their fruit, three-quarters of their vegetables and a quarter of their milk.”

“There are plenty of studies out there showing how important good nutrition is to learning, so if we want our children to be ready to learn, then the cafeteria environment is incredibly important,” Gross added.

Read the full story and comment below. 

Article by Kassondra Granata, Education World Contributor