HEALTHY study school food service revenue and expense report

Food service directors have a concern that federal reimbursement is not meeting the demands of increasing costs of healthier meals. The purpose of this article is to report the food option changes and the annual revenues and expenses of the school food service environment.

The HEALTHY study was a 3-year (2006 to 2009) randomized, cluster-designed trial conducted in 42 middle schools at 7 field centers. The schools selected had at least 50% of students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch or who belonged to a minority group. A randomly assigned half of the HEALTHY schools received a school health intervention program consisting of 4 integrated components: nutrition, physical activity, behavioral knowledge and skills, and social marketing. The nutrition component consisted of changing the meal plans to meet 5 nutrition goals. Revenue and expense data were collected from income statements, federal meal records, à la carte sale sheets, school store sale sheets, donated money/food records, and vending machines.

Although more intervention schools reached the nutritional goals than control schools, revenues and expenses were not significantly different between groups.

The HEALTHY study showed no adverse effect of school food policies on food service finances.