News & Events
Student Project Examines Limited Time for Lunch at School
Elementary school students in Seattle don’t get enough time to finish their lunch, according to research from our Nutritional Sciences students. Eighteen graduate students in Donna Johnson’s Public Health Nutrition Class, working with instructor Mary Podrabsky, spent winter quarter documenting the lack of lunch time at seven city schools. They found students had only 12 minutes of “seated time” on average; district policy calls for 20 minutes. Their report was presented recently to the Seattle Public School’s Wellness Task Force and was cited by parents at a School Board meeting. The graduate students also interviewed principals, crunched surveys of kitchen managers, and did a literature review to show the public health impacts of poor nutrition. Pictured from left to right are three of the graduate students who worked on this project: Toi Sennhauser, Kelsey Schmidt, and Tori Sorenson.
June 23, 2015