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School Lunch Program

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Introduction
The National School Lunch Program is the second largest food and nutrition assistance program which provides healthy school lunches to children all over the country. Each school district gets a meal reimbursement for the students that qualify for free or reduced meals. The participation rate at Torrance Unified School District (TUSD) is low due to various reasons like food preferences. The school district has decided to introduce new food items according to their food preferences and evaluate the participants response.
On Wednesday, February 28th, 2018 Victor Elementary school will be having a new food item introduced on their lunch menu cycle. This new item will be an orange chicken entrée with brown rice along with a frosty …show more content…
They also have a share table for uneaten prepackaged lunch items that can be donated or shared with other students that are still hungry. This means that when children are ready to throw their food away, they must make line first to have their tray looked at and be told at what bin to but their food in. We took this process to our advantage and it worked out smoothly. As the children stood in line we kindly asked them if we could take a picture of their food trays. We also used this time to have an open discussion with the children as they stood in line for their comments about the orange chicken with brown rice entrée. 74 student trays were analyzed and obtained the data below.
Since the school has an offer vs serve method of serving, not all plates contained the same amount of side (fortune cookie, milk, frosty peach cup, fruit or vegetable). Once the child adds an entrée item to their tray the only requirement for sides would be for them to comply to gab ½ cup of fruit or vegetable serving.
In the data obtained the total number of fruit and vegetables sides added up to 76. This means that each child had at least ½ cup of a fruit or vegetable with 2 students having both a fruit and a vegetable on their tray. Out of the 74 children that got the orange chicken and the brown rice, 45 children (60%) ate all their chicken and 17 of them only ate half of it. 40 of those children (54%) did not eat their brown rice at all or left at least ¾ of it

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