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Offering students healthier food choices at school helps improve their eating habits, a new study suggests.

The research included 55 middle schools in Michigan with mostly low-income students. Some of the schools made only limited changes to their nutrition policies and practices, while others introduced major changes.

Some of the new programs included raising nutrition standards for snacks and beverages, offering taste tests of healthy foods and beverages to students, marketing healthy foods in school, and removing ads for unhealthy foods.

In schools that introduced three or more new nutrition practices and policies, students ate 26 percent more fruits, 14 percent more vegetables and 30 percent more whole grains. They also increased their consumption of fiber, calcium and vitamins A and C, according to the study, which was published online Nov. 11 in the journal Childhood Obesity.  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_142537.html