Institute of Medicine Calls for Upgrade to School Meals

Institute of Medicine Recommends Cap on Calories

School meals should include more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and less sodium, and schools should put a “caloric cap” on meals, an Institute of Medicine report recommended last week.

Commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture , which runs the national school lunch and breakfast programs, the report aims to align school meals with the latest dietary guidelines for Americans, last updated in 2005.

“We’ve made great strides in improving the sophistication and accuracy that are used to assess and define children’s nutritional needs,” said Mary Kay Fox, a senior researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, a Princeton, N.J.-based firm that specializes in education, health-care, nutrition, and early-childhood issues. She was a committee member for the Institute of Medicine team that...