Kid’s Lunch and Recess Timing Can Affect Health

Ask kids what their favorite part of the school day is and most will say lunch and recess. But the timing of these events matters when it comes to what children eat and how much physical activity they get, researchers report.

The new findings could help schools develop policies to promote healthy eating and exercise habits for kids, the study authors said.

“Overall, our findings suggest that recess and lunch behaviors are interrelated. However, the specific food choices and activity levels children engage in may be subject to the timing and duration of lunch and recess,” researcher Gabriella McLoughlin said in an American Society for Nutrition news release.

Nutritional Intake and Physical Activity for Kids

McLoughlin, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is scheduled to present the research Sunday at the society’s annual meeting in Chicago.

For the study, researchers analyzed what 151 fourth- and fifth-graders at two schools ate for lunch and their physical activity. All ate lunch right before or right after recess. Most research has focused on nutritional intake or physical activity during recess. Study leader Naiman Khan called this the first “to objectively measure food intake at lunch in conjunction with physical activity, and consider the influence of duration and timing.”

Khan is an assistant professor of kinesiology and community health at the university. The researchers discovered that students who had recess before eating lunch wasted less food. But kids who had lunch before recess ate more vegetables.

While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends recess before lunch to help curb food waste, researchers say this schedule and how much time kids have to eat and play could have unwanted effects on what they eat and how much exercise they get. The study found that kids who had more time for lunch and recess and who ate before they played were more active. The opposite was true for boys and girls who had less time for lunch and recess. These students were more active if they had recess before they ate.

“We plan to communicate our findings to school teachers, administrators and policymakers to facilitate the implementation of evidence-based policies that support children’s ability to meet their daily physical activity and nutritional recommendations,” Khan said.

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