Salad Bar Serving Size

What is a ½ cup serving?

Did you know that on average, every school in our district throws away approximately 15 pounds of uneaten fruits and vegetables each day? That’s enough to fill a 5-gallon bucket every single day and adds up to about 24,000 pounds of wasted food per year! Most of those fruits and vegetables are from the school salad bar.

One way to reduce school food waste is to encourage students only to take what they are going to eat. This gets a little tricky because students are required to take a certain amount, specifically a ½ cup, of fruits OR vegetables when they buy lunch. It can be confusing to figure out.

This activity will help familiarize students with what a ½ cup serving looks like. Students will be able to breeze through the lunch line without taking too much food, which may end up in the trash.