The Effect of A Food Service Intervention (catch Eat Smart) on School Meal Cost

Abstract

LEARNING OUTCOME: To describe how a school-based food service intervention to lower fat and sodium affects average school lunch and breakfast meal costs.The Eat Smart School Nutrition Program, the school food service intervention component of the Child and Adolescent Trial for Cardiovascular Health (CATCH), was designed to lower the fat, saturated fat and sodium in school meals. The purpose of this study was to determine how the intervention affected average meal costs. School meal cost data (breakfast and lunch) were calculated for Texas CATCH school cafeterias (14 intervention & 10 control). In October 1992, cost information was collected for recipe ingredients & vendor products for each menu item served during that month, including the fair market cost for commodity foods. Food costs were then calculated for complete breakfast and lunch menus during the month; these values were used to determine the percentage of the total food cost associated with breakfast (41%) & lunch (59%). The calculated percentages were then applied to monthly total food costs for individual cafeterias from September 1991 to May 1994. The average yearly food costs for lunch ranged from $0.67 to $0.73 in control schools and from $0.71 to $0.74 in intervention schools. Average yearly breakfast costs ranged from $0.47 to $0.50 in control schools and from $0.49 to $0.51 in intervention schools. With the exception of February 1992, the first month of the intervention, there were no significant food cost differences between intervention and control cafeterias for either breakfast or lunch menus. During this same period, the percent of energy from fat decreased from 41% in both control and intervention schools to 34% in control schools, and 30% in intervention schools. Based on these data, it appears that decreasing the fat in school meals does not significantly affect the long term food costs of either school lunch or breakfast menus.