Study shows that removing school junk food leads to better eating habits by students

A new study confirms a widespread assumption: Removing junk food from schools leads children to eat less junk food. Some school officials have argued that removing junk food from schools would only lead to students eating twice as much junk food at home, but researchers at Yale University say that wasn't the case in three Connecticut middle schools they studied.

"We found that when you take soda and high-fat snacks out of schools, students did not compensate at home. Instead, they ate better at school and no worse at home," study lead author Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, said in a Newswise release. Schwartz said financial pressure from the food industry, which wants to build brand loyalty, and the desire of schools to keep getting a cut of the profits from vending machines, stokes most of the opposition to removing junk food in schools.

Researchers replaced junk food with snacks that met state nutrition standards at three middle schools and compared student eating behavior at those schools to three schools were junk food supplies were not altered. While students offered the healthier foods did eat better, some say even those foods aren't enough. Joel Fuhrman, a family physician and study author said in the news release: “Even the foods that weren’t as bad, they weren’t health foods." (Read more)