School lunch; teens and sleep

Listen 00:49:56

Guests: Marlene Schwartz, Justin Gallagher, Wendy Troxel, Amy Norr

The Trump administration has said it wants to roll back the Obama-era healthy school lunch requirements, loosening rules around whole grains, sodium and milk. For a lot of students, school lunch is the healthiest meal they get each day. In a step to ensure all students have access to a healthy meal, New York just joined a handful of other cities last week, by offering universal free lunch to all public students. We start this hour talking about the importance of healthy school lunches with MARLENE SCHWARTZ, director of the Rudd Center for Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut, and JUSTIN GALLAGHERprofessor of economics at Case Western University. Then, we turn to early school start times and drowsy teenagers. We’ve known for many years that starting school too early is bad for adolescent health but a recent study says that starting schools a little later could save $83 billion over a decade.  WENDY TROXEL, co-author of the study and a senior behavioral and social scientist at the RAND Corporation, and AMY NORR, a parent activist in the Lower Merion School District, join us to discuss teenage sleep and the challenges to changing school start times.

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