Food for Thought Fall 2022

state agency HAPPENINGS

building up school breakfast

BY ASHLEY HELLER SCHOOL NUTRITION SPECIALIST INDIANA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Updating the Menu Updating the breakfast menu can be a great way to welcome new students into eating breakfast at school and welcome back students that were eating breakfast at the school before. If you are currently only offering cold breakfast items, try adding a hot breakfast item once a week and build more hot items into the menu from there. Schools could also look into offering a few choices or options to the breakfast menu to allow students to customize their breakfast to what they like the most. If a school already has a cycle menu that is one or two weeks, see if it is possible to extend that to more weeks to spark interest and increase appeal with a larger array of options. Use Student Feedback A study done in 2018 4 showed that the more participation in their meal a child has, the more likely they are to eat what is presented to them. Although students are not able to make the meals at schools, you can help them have a say in what is on their tray with ideas from taste testings, meeting with groups, etc.

After two years of free meals for all students at breakfast and lunch, many schools are concerned about participation numbers as we move back to normal operations. There are many ways schools can work to bolster their breakfast programs and boost participation. Many small but impactful changes can also be made at the menu-level of the program that can have a big difference in a student’s day. We know from many studies that students who eat a school breakfast are more likely to have increased alertness, concentration, attention, participation in the classroom, and do better on tests, while also having a decrease in behavioral issues and days of school missed 1 . Overall, students who consume a school breakfast are eating a breakfast of higher nutritional quality than students who are eating breakfast elsewhere 2 . A study published in 2013 3 also found that an increased frequency of eating breakfast was positively associated with improved school performance. Some evidence suggests that increased quality of this breakfast in terms of providing a greater variety of food groups (three to four) is also positively related to school performance. As school nutrition staff know, school breakfast is an important part of the day! So, how do we encourage more students to eat nourishing, fuel-packed school breakfasts?

As mentioned, many students find it fun to

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