School Gardens Enhance Academic Performance and Dietary Outcomes in Children.

Background: Schools face increasing demands to provide education on healthy living and improve core academic performance. Although these appear to be competing concerns, they may interact beneficially. This article focuses on school garden programs and their effects on students' academic and dietary outcomes.

Factors affecting fruit and vegetable school lunch waste in Wisconsin elementary schools participating in Farm to School programmes.

Objective: To examine characteristics potentially associated with school lunch fruit and vegetable waste, both overall and pre/post implementation of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

Design: Multi-year (2010-2013) cross-sectional study using pre- and post-meal digital photographs of students' school lunch trays to estimate fruit and vegetable availability and consumption. Fruit and vegetable items were categorized for factors suspected to impact waste: prior farm to school years, placement (main menu, salad bar), procurement (local, conventional), preparation (cooked, raw) and meal component (entrée, side, topping).

Fruits and vegetables displace, but do not decrease, total energy in school lunches.

Background: The high overweight and obesity prevalence among US children is a well-established public health concern. Diet is known to play a causal role in obesity. Increasing fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption to recommended levels is proposed to help reduce obesity, because their bulk and low energy density are believed to reduce energy-dense food consumption (volume displacement hypothesis).

Farm to elementary school programming increases access to fruits and vegetables and increases their consumption among those with low intake.

Objective: To assess the effectiveness of Wisconsin Farm to School (F2S) programs in increasing students' fruit and vegetable (FV) intake.

Design: Quasi-experimental baseline and follow-up assessments: knowledge and attitudes survey, food frequency questionnaire (FFQ), and lunch tray photo observation.

Setting: Wisconsin elementary schools: 1 urban and 8 rural.