Check Up: School lunches linked to disease dangers

Are the lunches you send to school making your kid sick?

They sure could be, according to a study by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin. They measured the temperatures of food in bag lunches 90 minutes before children at air-conditioned Texas child-care centers were scheduled to eat them.

Ninety percent of the lunches were in insulated bags. Even so, the results were disgusting. 

Fewer than 2 percent of the perishable items were in what the researchers deemed a safe temperature zone: less than 39.2 degrees or more than 140 degrees. Only 14 of 618 items — they focused on meats, dairy products, and vegetables — in lunches with one ice pack were a safe temperature. Multiple ice packs weren’t much better: Just 5 of 61 items were safe.

Unsafe temperatures allow bacteria to grow, increasing the odds that children will get a nasty food-borne illness, said Fawaz Almansour, lead author of the new study. The Agriculture Department recommends that even properly cooked foods be discarded after more than two hours at these temperatures.

The study, published Monday in Pediatrics, did not look at how many children actually got sick. The important thing, Almansour said, is that their lunches put them at risk for a long list of bugs. Children younger than 4 are especially susceptible to food-borne illnesses.

The authors suggest that parents and teachers — some of whom had refrigerators but weren’t putting children’s lunches in them quickly — need more education on food safety.

But a conversation with Almansour quickly confirmed that it was a lot easier to identify a scary problem than it will be to fix it.

The insulated bags actually prevent cool air in refrigerators from reaching the food, he said. So if children have access to refrigerators, they could take their lunch in insulated bags with paper bags inside, then put the paper bags in the refrigerator. It might also help to open the insulated bags in the fridge. 

But most older children put their lunches in lockers. Because ice packs aren’t very effective, Almansour suggested putting two large ice packs — or more — in an insulated lunch bag. Hmmm. Then where do you put the food?

Almansour said the issue clearly needs more study. “This specific study was just an eye-opener,” he said.