In 2015, the Tisch Food Center launched a partnership with FoodCorps, an AmeriCorps partner, to lead their evaluation study. FoodCorps connects kids to healthy food by placing service members in over 400 schools across the nation to foster the creation of holistically healthy school food environments. 

The goals of this evaluation were to:

1. Revise FoodCorps’ Healthy School Progress Report to better reflect FoodCorps’ programming and evidence from the research literature on creating a healthy school environment to promote fruits and vegetables.
2. Better understand how the presence of a FoodCorps service member in a school changes the school food environment.
3. Explore which aspects of a healthy school food environment are related to higher consumption of fruits and vegetables at school lunch. 

Below is a summary of the work and findings—including that students in high-implementation FoodCorps schools eat triple the fruits and vegetables compared to children in low-implementation schools.

Report:

FoodCorps: Creating Healthy School Environments

Brief:

Related Publications:

Graziose M, Koch P, Wolf R, Gray HL, Trent R, Contento IR. Cafeteria noise exposure and fruit and vegetable consumption at school lunch: A cross-sectional study of elementary students. Appetite. 2019;136:130-136.

Graziose M, Wolf R, Koch P, Gray HL, Contento IR. Validation of a Questionnaire to Measure Fruits and Vegetables Selected and Consumed at School Lunch Among Second- and Third-Grade Students. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 2018;118(9):1700-1710.

Related Abstracts:

Koch P, Wolf R, Graziose M, Trent R, Gray HL, Contento IR. Development of the FoodCorps Healthy School Progress Report to Measure School Food Programming and Environment. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. 2017; 49 (7 Supplement1):S45.

Wolf R, Graziose M, Gray HL, Koch P, Trent R, Contento IR. Cross-sectional Study of Associations Between Fruit and Vegetable at School Lunch and Food-Based Programming, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. 2017;49 (7 Supplement1):S106-S107.

Graziose M, Koch P, Wolf R, Gray HL, Contento IR. Development and Validation of a Questionnaire to Assess Fruit and Vegetable (FV) Consumption at School Lunch. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. 2017;49 (7 Supplement1):S6-7. 

Graziose M, Koch P, Wolf R, Gray HL, Contento IR. School Cafeteria Noise is Associated with Fruit and Vegetable (FV) Consumption at Lunch Among Elementary School Students. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. 2017;49 (7 Supplement1):S14-15.

_{Funding for this study was from FoodCorps.}