Elizabeth Harrington reports for the Washington Free Beacon on one interesting data point associated with the introduction of new school lunch rules.

A federally funded study on the effects of First Lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch standards found that vegetable consumption has “significantly decreased” since the rules went into effect.

The study, released by the University of Connecticut’s Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity, was praised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as authoritative research that more kids are eating fruit and fewer are throwing away their food.

However, the USDA neglected to mention that the study found that kids are choosing vegetables 16.5 percent less of the time since the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act was enacted in 2012.

“The percentage of students selecting vegetables significantly decreased from 68 [percent] in 2012 to 62 [percent] in 2013,” the study said.

Last year, even fewer students chose vegetables, dropping to 52 percent.

The study’s authors, a group of academics from UConn, Yale University, and Berkeley, rationalized the findings that since fewer kids were choosing vegetables to begin with, less ended up in the trash.

“The proportion of students who chose a vegetable dropped from 68 [percent] to 52 [percent], but students selecting vegetables ate nearly 20 [percent] more of them, effectively lowering vegetable waste,” they said.