Kids think produce is garbage

Though many American elementary schools are serving more fruit and vegetables at lunchtime, much of it ends up in the trash, a study finds.

Federal guidelines introduced last year require that schools serve at least one serving of fruit or vegetables with each meal in order to get full funding for the free and reduced-price school lunch program, according to SFGate.com. The study, in which researchers at Cornell and Brigham Young universities looked at lunchrooms at 18 elementary schools, found that kids are throwing away up to 70 percent of the fruits and veggies served to them.

It costs about $5.4 million to provide the produce to the 31.6 million children the National School Lunch Program serves; the study’s authors estimated that about $3.8 million of the food is thrown away.

The authors also worked on a related study that suggested kids are more likely to eat fruits and veggies if they’re sliced rather than served whole.