Time for Lunch: The Impact of Lunch Time Constraints on Child Eating Behaviors

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Status: Completed

Conditions: Time Constraints During School Meals

Treatments: Behavioral: Lunch period length

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04191291

19412

Details and patient eligibility

About

Recent peer-reviewed observational evidence suggests that school children receive anywhere from 10-33 minutes of seated lunch time and that students with less time to eat discard higher amounts of milk, entrée (i.e. protein items), grains, and vegetables. This waste is a missed nutritional and food security opportunity and also negatively impacts the environment. The purpose of this study is to estimate the impact that lunch time constraints have on child food selection, consumption and waste behaviors using a crossover trial design, where the duration of seated lunch times are randomly allocated to be either 10 minutes or 20 minutes each day.

Enrollment: 39 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 7 to 14 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Must be enrolled in local summer camp

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Other

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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39 participants in 2 patient groups

Shortened lunch period

Experimental group

Description:

The amount of seated lunch time will be 10 minutes.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Lunch period length

Longer lunch period

Experimental group

Description:

The amount of seated lunch time will be 20 minutes.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Lunch period length