Nowadays several public schools are offering healthier options for lunch but they are not giving students enough time to eat their meals. A recent study has shown that kids who get less than 20 minutes for their lunch consume less of their meals.

The study’s findings suggest that children should have at least 25 minutes to eat their lunch. Study lead author Juliana Cohen, adjunct assistant professor at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston, US, said, “Many children, especially those from low-income families, rely on school meals for up to half their daily energy intake so it is essential that we give students a sufficient amount of time to eat their lunches”.

Researchers during their study wanted to examine the effect of lunch period length on students' food choices and intake. They tracked and analyzed nearly 1,001 students in six elementary and middle schools, with lunch periods ranging from 20-30 minutes, in a low-income urban school district in Massachusetts.

Researchers found that students who got less than 20 minutes to eat lunch consumed 13% less of their entrees, 12% less of their vegetables, and 10% less of their milk than students who had at least 25 minutes to eat.

Senior author Eric Rimm, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a statement that every day over 30 million students in the United States receive a free or discounted meal due to the National School Lunch Program. The facility is available in 100,000 schools across the US.

Researchers suggested that not all schools may be able to increase their lunch periods, but they could develop strategies by which kids could more quickly through lunch lines, such as by adding more serving lines or setting up automated checkout systems.