Parental and family predictors of fruits and vegetables in elementary school children's home-packed lunches across a school week

Children's evaluations of culturally diverse lunchbox foods

Previous research indicates that children make ingroup-outgroup judgments based on notions of food conventionality and that ethnic minority children have been teased or bullied for bringing non-conventional foods to school. This series of three studies experimentally investigated U.S. school-age children's evaluations of culturally diverse lunchbox foods. Study 1 examined an online sample of children aged 5 to 12 years and their evaluations of foods from four cultures (mainstream American, Chinese, Indian, and Mexican) on the taste, smell, and messiness of the food, the appropriateness of bringing the food to school, and whether "cool kids" eat the food. Compared with the mainstream American lunchbox, children rated the Chinese, Indian, and Mexican lunchboxes as less tasty, more messy, and less likely that cool kids would bring those foods to school. In Studies 2 and 3, we examined children's behavioral choices in a hypothetical cafeteria. In both studies, we found that the match between children's own lunch preferences and what was displayed in the mainstream American lunchbox was the only predictor of children's choice to sit at the table with the American lunchbox. Individual variables (e.g., child age, food pickiness) and contextual variables (e.g., neighborhood diversity) did not predict children's table choices. This research highlights children's understanding of familiarity and conventionality of foods and the social consequences of their behavioral choices.

Acceptability, Helpfulness, and Utility of the Healthy Lunch Box Booklet (HLBB) for Parents and School-Age Children

Purpose: School lunches are of poor nutritional quality in Canada. Parents play an important role in the preparation of school lunches for young children. This study aimed to evaluate the acceptability and helpfulness of the Healthy Lunch Box Booklet (HLBB) to support parents in packing healthy school lunches for their children.Methods: The HLBB was distributed at four schools in London, Ontario to students in full-day Kindergarten to Grade three. Parents were asked to complete an online survey from April to November 2019.Results: Parents (n = 58) reported the HLBB to be helpful (96.3%) and found the sections on new school lunch and snack ideas and nutritional information (e.g., label reading) particularly useful. Some parents also stated that the HLBB created opportunities to interact with their children regarding school lunch preparation. In terms of perceived impacts, parents reported increased confidence (68.6%) and learning something new (79.6%) about school lunch preparation and felt that their children's diet was impacted accordingly.Conclusions: The HLBB was found to be an acceptable and useful nutrition resource that supports parents in packing healthy school lunches for their children and therefore warrants further study.

Are mothers under lunchbox pressure? An exploration of the experiences of Victorian mothers preparing lunchboxes for their children

ISSUE ADDRESSED

A healthy diet is particularly important during childhood. Research suggests that more than 95% of Australian primary school aged children do not eat a diet consistent with the Australian Dietary Guidelines, putting them at risk of poor health. Interventions to improve the quality of children's lunchboxes may help address this issue. However, there is limited understanding of the factors impacting lunchbox preparation.

METHODS

This study explored the experiences of 10 mothers of Victorian primary school students. Mothers took part in semi-structured interviews exploring their views on lunchbox preparation and food choices. The study used a Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology and data were analysed using an inductive, thematic approach.

RESULTS

Analysis of the interviews yielded four main themes. (i) Mothers experienced a range of non-nutritional barriers that impacted the food choices they made for their children. (ii) Children's preferences influenced parental food choices. (iii) Mothers experienced and/or perceived judgement about the food choices they make for their children. And (iv) Mothers identified a lack of support and information from schools about what was appropriate for school lunch.

CONCLUSION

Findings of this study indicate that mothers are concerned with balancing nutrition and child preferences within the broader context of guidelines, perceived or real judgement and income constraints. SO WHAT?: The school environment may be an ideal setting to promote healthy eating but support for parents is needed. This is the first study in Victoria exploring mothers' perspectives on lunchbox preparation and provides initial information on which future research can build.

Studying Children's Eating at Home: Using Synchronous Videoconference Sessions to Adapt to COVID-19 and Beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many facets of developmental research, including research that measures children's eating behavior. Here, children's food intake is often measured by weighing foods that children are offered before and after in-person testing sessions. Many studies also examine children's food ratings (the extent to which they like or dislike a food), assessed via picture categorization tasks or hedonic scales. This paper reviews existing research on different methods for characterizing children's eating behavior (with a focus on food intake, preferences, and concepts) and presents a feasibility study that examined whether children's eating behaviors at home (including their food intake and ratings) can be measured via live video-chat sessions. The feasibility analyses revealed that an observational feeding paradigm at home yielded a majority (more than 70%) of video-chat recordings that had a sufficient view of the child and adequate sound and picture quality required for observational coding for the majority of the session's duration. Such positioning would enable behavioral coding of child food intake, parent food talk, and meal characteristics. Moreover, children were able to answer questions to stories and express their preferences via researcher screen-share methods (which can assess children's self-reported food preferences and beliefs) with low rates of exclusion across studies. The article ends with a discussion on the opportunities and challenges of using online platforms to conduct studies on children's eating behaviors in their home environments during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

What's for Lunch? Investigating the Experiences, Perceptions, and Habits of Parents and School Lunches: A Scoping Review

BACKGROUND

Research indicates home-packed school lunches are lower in nutritional value compared with school-provided meals. Due to the lack of a school lunch program, most of what Canadian children consume during the school day is determined by parents and caregivers through packed lunches. Despite this, little research has focused on the school lunch packing habits and attitudes of parents. The purpose of this scoping review was to improve understanding of parental perceptions, experiences, and habits with respect to home-packed school lunches.

METHODS

We conducted a scoping review of peer-reviewed and gray literature. We reviewed only studies published from January 2000 to January 2019 with a focus on parents' lunch packing habits for their school-aged children.

RESULTS

The review included 7 studies, with articles from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. The studies identified 6 themes influencing parental decisions regarding what to pack in their child's lunch-school environment, food as fuel, convenience, child's influence, cost, and the lunch experience.

CONCLUSIONS

The decisions that influence what is packed in a school lunch are complex and indicate the need for support. Parents, schools, districts, and government policymakers need to work collaboratively to improve the healthiness of home-packed school lunches.

Nutrition Education Practices of Health Teachers from Shanghai K-12 Schools: The Current Status, Barriers and Willingness to Teach

China is facing challenges in both undernutrition and overnutrition, resulting from unhealthy diets. Nutrition education early in life, especially in school settings, has been reported to be effective in addressing these challenges. However, little is known about how nutrition education is delivered in schools in China. This study aimed to investigate the current status of delivering nutrition education by health teachers in Shanghai and to determine the barriers and resources that influence the teachers’ practices and their willingness to teach nutrition. In 2016–2017, a cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted on 904 health teachers from 823 K-12 schools in Shanghai, China. There were 722 (79.9%) teachers that had the experience of teaching nutrition, but only 137 (19.0% of 722) spent ≥1 h teaching nutrition courses in each school year. Only 18.6% of the teachers had received a formal education in nutrition in college. About 88.5% of teachers expressed their willingness to teach nutrition in the future. The three major reasons for never teaching nutrition were categorized as: nutrition being taught by other teachers (39.5%), willing to teach but lack of knowledge (37.9%), and the subject not being required by school administrators (31.3%). Teachers who spent more time or were more willing to teach nutrition courses were those who were female, from private schools, had a better background in receiving nutrition education, and were more concerned about nutrition. Our data show that nutrition education is at a formative stage in Shanghai, China.