School Meals and Academic Achievement

By Althea Need Kaminske

(Cover image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay)

Note: This post focuses specifically on education within U.S. school systems. 

When we give presentations and talk to people about effective learning strategies, one of the most common questions that we’re asked is: “If this is so effective, why isn’t it being taught in schools?”. This is a complicated question with a complicated answer. The answer is mired in complications from how teachers are trained in schools of education, the politics of what states require to be taught in classrooms, and to the fact that these strategies are more guiding principles than structured programs. There aren’t clear-cut policies to be implemented and, in fact, I would be hesitant to advocate for them as they could be easily misunderstood and misapplied. 

On the other hand, one policy that we know has a substantial benefit for education is school lunch and breakfast programs. Decades of research have demonstrated that children do better in school when they aren’t hungry (1, 2, 3). According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearly 15% of households with children were food-insecure in 2020 (4). Not surprisingly, poverty seems to be the largest driver of food insecurity with 10.8% of low-income households reporting very low food security (4). At the university level, as many as 39%-48% of students are food insecure (5).

Why Do Meals Help? (Your brain is in your body!)

Our brains require a lot of energy to think. Around 20% of our daily calories go toward fueling the brain (6). Some studies have suggested that engaging in more cognitively demanding tasks burns more calories (7), while others have noted that this may vary by person and by task (7). Given how important food is for thinking, it’s not surprising that food insecurity is associated with decreased cognitive function (9).

Furthermore, the quality of the food we eat can have an impact on our ability to think and learn. Foods high in saturated fats can have a negative impact on our ability to remember information (10). Fortunately, eating fruits and vegetables has been found to reverse these negative impacts (10), so eating an overall balanced diet means that you can indulge in the occasional greasy pizza or ice cream without worry.

How Do Meals Help?

Many school meal programs have found positive effects of meals in schools. For example, The Maryland Meals for Achievement (MMFA) program found that students who received free in-classroom breakfast had better student achievement, classroom behavior, and attention as well as fewer school absences and complaints of hunger (11). On a larger scale, one study examined the long-term effects of the School Breakfast Program, a program established with the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 which provides free breakfast to children from households with income at or below 130% of the poverty level (2). The availability of the School Breakfast Program increased math achievement by 23-29% of a standard deviation (2).

Image from Pixabay

More recently, a study by the Brookings Institute found that the quality of school lunch affected achievement in school (3). School lunch menus were assigned a score from 0 to 100 on the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) where a higher score indicates a healthier meal. They found that student test scores were about 4 percentile points higher when schools offered meals with higher HEI scores. Furthermore, these increases were 40% larger for low-income students who qualify for free or reduced lunch programs. Providing meals for students positively affects student achievement, and providing healthy meals increases that effect.

What is the State of School Meal Programs?

At a national level, school meal programs cost around $18.7 billion per year to run, but provide an estimated $40 billion in health and economic benefits (12). Despite the overwhelmingly positive effect of school meal programs, these programs are not universally adopted in all states. The Food Research and Action Center provides a list of School Meals Legislation and Funding by State (13). Currently, states without any legislation or funding for school meals are: Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming. On the other end of the spectrum, states that mandate schools to offer meals, provide additional funding for programing, and have other legislation to address school meals are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia.

If you are interested in clear, effective policies that will improve student achievement in schools, then I suggest advocating for school meals!

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References

1. Hinrichs, P. (2010). The Effects of the National School Lunch Program on Education and Health. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 29(3), 479-505.

2. Frisvold, D. E., (2015). Nutrition and Cognitive Achievement: An Evaluation of the School Breakfast Program. Journal of Public Economics, April 2015, 91-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2014.12.003 

3. Anderson, M. L., Gallagher, J., & Ramirez Ritchie, E. (2017). How the quality of school lunch affects students’ academic performance. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/05/03/how-the-quality-of-school-lunch-affects-students-academic-performance/ 

4. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service (2022, April 22) Food Secruity in the U.S. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-u-s/key-statistics-graphics/

5. Sumeracki, M. A., Altman, W. S., Cheng, C., Fallon, M., Bouas Henry, K., Michaels, J. L., Nordstrom, A., Pena-Shaff, J., Spiegelman, J., & Weinstein-Jones, Y. (2020). The APA Guide to College Teaching: Essential Tools and Techniques Based on Psychological Science. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/undergrad/college-teaching-guide 

6. Jabr, F. (2012, July 18) Does thinking really hard burn more calories? Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thinking-hard-calories/

7. Scholey, A.B., Harper, S., & Kennedy, D. O. (2001). Cognitive demand and blood glucose. Physiology & Behavior, 73(4), 585-592. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0031-9384(01)00476-0 

8. Larson, G. E., Haier, R. J., LaCasse, L., & Hazen, K. (1995). Evaluation of a “mental effort” hypothesis for correlations between cortical metabolism and intelligence. Intelligence, 21(3), 267-278. https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-2896(95)90017-9 

9. Royer, M. F., Guerithault, N., Braden, B. B., Laska, M. N., & Bruening, M. (2021). Food insecurity is associated with cognitive function: A systematic review of findings across the life course. International Journal of Translational Medicine, 1(3), 205-222, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijtm1030015 

10. Spencer, S. J., Korosi, A., Layé, S., Shukitt-Hale, B., & Barrientos, R. M. (2017). Food for thought: how nutrition impacts cognition and emotion. npj Science of Food, 1(1), 1-8.

11. Murphy, J. M., Rankin, E., Feeney, K., Kenney, L., & Kleinman, R. (2000). Effects of a universally free, in-classroom school breakfast program: Results from the second year of the Maryland Meals for Achievement Evaluation. Maryland State Department of Education, Baltimore. 

12.  The Rockefeller Foundation (2021). True Cost of Food: School Meals Case Study. https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/report/true-cost-of-food-school-meals-case-study/

13. Food Research & Action Center (2022, July). School Meals Legislation and Funding by State. https://frac.org/wp-content/uploads/School-Meals-State-Legislation-Chart.pdf