Students choosing fat-free chocolate milk during school lunch consume more calories, total sugar, protein, minerals and vitamins at lunch.

Objective: To examine how milk consumption varies by milk choice and measure the association of milk choice on the nutritional and energetic content of National School Lunch Program (NSLP) lunches.

Design: An observational plate waste study using the Digital Photography of Foods Method.

Setting: Data were collected from two suburban South Carolina schools in one district during February and March 2013.

Selection and consumption of lunches by National School Lunch Program participants.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 requires schools participating in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to offer a variety of healthy food options each day. Using digital photography data collected from two suburban elementary schools in the spring of 2013, we examine NSLP participant's selection and consumption of all five NSLP lunch components ((1) milk, (2) vegetable, (3) fruit, (4) meat/meat alternate (MA), and (5) grain). We use logit regressions to analyze the selection of the various lunch components by race/ethnicity, gender, grade, and household income level.