New York : A longer lunch period at school could make children healthier as researchers have found that students with less than 20 minutes to eat their lunch consume significantly less of their meals, milk, and vegetables than those who are not as rushed, reports IANS.
The findings suggest that children should have at least 25 minutes to eat their lunch. “Many children, especially those from low-income families, rely on school meals for up to half their daily energy intake so it is essential that we give students a sufficient amount of time to eat their lunches,” said lead author of the study Juliana Cohen, adjunct assistant professor at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, US.
Each day, over 30 million US students receive a free or discounted meal thanks to the National School Lunch Programme. The researchers wanted to examine the effect of lunch period length on students’ food choices and intake.
They looked at 1,001 students in six elementary and middle schools, with lunch periods ranging from 20-30 minutes, in a low-income urban school district in Massachusetts.
They analysed the students’ food selection and consumption by monitoring what was left on their plates at the end of the lunch period.