Cargando…
School food policy at Dutch primary schools: room for improvement? Cross-sectional findings from the INPACT study
BACKGROUND: Schools can play an important role in the prevention of obesity, e.g. by providing an environment that stimulates healthy eating habits and by developing a food policy to provide such an environment. The effectiveness of a school food policy is affected by the content of the policy, its...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2013
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3637056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23587089 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-339 |
_version_ | 1782267395492020224 |
---|---|
author | van Ansem, Wilke JC Schrijvers, Carola TM Rodenburg, Gerda Schuit, Albertine J van de Mheen, Dike |
author_facet | van Ansem, Wilke JC Schrijvers, Carola TM Rodenburg, Gerda Schuit, Albertine J van de Mheen, Dike |
author_sort | van Ansem, Wilke JC |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Schools can play an important role in the prevention of obesity, e.g. by providing an environment that stimulates healthy eating habits and by developing a food policy to provide such an environment. The effectiveness of a school food policy is affected by the content of the policy, its implementation and its support by parents, teachers and principals. The aim of this study is to detect opportunities to improve the school food policy and/or implementation at Dutch primary schools. Therefore, this study explores the school food policy and investigates schools’ (teachers and principals) and parents’ opinion on the school food policy. METHODS: Data on the schools’ perspective of the food policy was collected from principals and teachers by means of semi-structured interviews. In total 74 principals and 72 teachers from 83 Dutch primary schools were interviewed. Data on parental perceptions about the school food policy were based on a cross-sectional survey among 1,429 parents from the same schools. RESULTS: Most principals (87.1%) reported that their school had a written food policy; however in most cases the rules were not clearly defined. Most of the principals (87.8%) believed that their school paid sufficient attention to nutrition and health. Teachers and principals felt that parents were primarily responsible to encourage healthy eating habits among children, while 49.8% of the parents believed that it is also a responsibility of the school to foster healthy eating habits among children. Most parents reported that they appreciated the school food policy and comply with the food rules. Parents’ opinion on the enforcement of the school food policy varied: 28.1% believed that the school should enforce the policy more strongly, 32.1% was satisfied, and 39.8% had no opinion on this topic. CONCLUSION: Dutch primary schools could play a more important role in fostering healthy eating habits among children. The school food policy could be improved by clearly formulating food rules, simplifying supervision of the food rules, and defining how to enforce the food rules. In addition, the school food policy will only influence children’s dietary behaviour if both the school and the parents support the policy. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3637056 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-36370562013-04-27 School food policy at Dutch primary schools: room for improvement? Cross-sectional findings from the INPACT study van Ansem, Wilke JC Schrijvers, Carola TM Rodenburg, Gerda Schuit, Albertine J van de Mheen, Dike BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Schools can play an important role in the prevention of obesity, e.g. by providing an environment that stimulates healthy eating habits and by developing a food policy to provide such an environment. The effectiveness of a school food policy is affected by the content of the policy, its implementation and its support by parents, teachers and principals. The aim of this study is to detect opportunities to improve the school food policy and/or implementation at Dutch primary schools. Therefore, this study explores the school food policy and investigates schools’ (teachers and principals) and parents’ opinion on the school food policy. METHODS: Data on the schools’ perspective of the food policy was collected from principals and teachers by means of semi-structured interviews. In total 74 principals and 72 teachers from 83 Dutch primary schools were interviewed. Data on parental perceptions about the school food policy were based on a cross-sectional survey among 1,429 parents from the same schools. RESULTS: Most principals (87.1%) reported that their school had a written food policy; however in most cases the rules were not clearly defined. Most of the principals (87.8%) believed that their school paid sufficient attention to nutrition and health. Teachers and principals felt that parents were primarily responsible to encourage healthy eating habits among children, while 49.8% of the parents believed that it is also a responsibility of the school to foster healthy eating habits among children. Most parents reported that they appreciated the school food policy and comply with the food rules. Parents’ opinion on the enforcement of the school food policy varied: 28.1% believed that the school should enforce the policy more strongly, 32.1% was satisfied, and 39.8% had no opinion on this topic. CONCLUSION: Dutch primary schools could play a more important role in fostering healthy eating habits among children. The school food policy could be improved by clearly formulating food rules, simplifying supervision of the food rules, and defining how to enforce the food rules. In addition, the school food policy will only influence children’s dietary behaviour if both the school and the parents support the policy. BioMed Central 2013-04-12 /pmc/articles/PMC3637056/ /pubmed/23587089 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-339 Text en Copyright © 2013 van Ansem et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article van Ansem, Wilke JC Schrijvers, Carola TM Rodenburg, Gerda Schuit, Albertine J van de Mheen, Dike School food policy at Dutch primary schools: room for improvement? Cross-sectional findings from the INPACT study |
title | School food policy at Dutch primary schools: room for improvement? Cross-sectional findings from the INPACT study |
title_full | School food policy at Dutch primary schools: room for improvement? Cross-sectional findings from the INPACT study |
title_fullStr | School food policy at Dutch primary schools: room for improvement? Cross-sectional findings from the INPACT study |
title_full_unstemmed | School food policy at Dutch primary schools: room for improvement? Cross-sectional findings from the INPACT study |
title_short | School food policy at Dutch primary schools: room for improvement? Cross-sectional findings from the INPACT study |
title_sort | school food policy at dutch primary schools: room for improvement? cross-sectional findings from the inpact study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3637056/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23587089 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-13-339 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT vanansemwilkejc schoolfoodpolicyatdutchprimaryschoolsroomforimprovementcrosssectionalfindingsfromtheinpactstudy AT schrijverscarolatm schoolfoodpolicyatdutchprimaryschoolsroomforimprovementcrosssectionalfindingsfromtheinpactstudy AT rodenburggerda schoolfoodpolicyatdutchprimaryschoolsroomforimprovementcrosssectionalfindingsfromtheinpactstudy AT schuitalbertinej schoolfoodpolicyatdutchprimaryschoolsroomforimprovementcrosssectionalfindingsfromtheinpactstudy AT vandemheendike schoolfoodpolicyatdutchprimaryschoolsroomforimprovementcrosssectionalfindingsfromtheinpactstudy |