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As more schools institute BMI screening and surveillance systems, their role has become more controversial, prompting growing and detailed discussion of whether or not this is a supportive action.
Schools may have an ethical obligation to act in response to the precipitous increase in the incidence of obesity among children. Using a bioethics framework, “The Ethical Basis for Promoting Nutritional Health in Public Schools in the United States” presents a rationale for school programs to improve the nutritional quality of students' diets.
The objectives of the Healthy Eating, Active Communities (HEAC) program were to understand how students in low-income communities in California assess their current school food environments, to identify the foods and beverages they want to be able to buy at school, and to determine the extent to which their stated preferences affect their purchasing and consumption patterns during the school day.
The 2010 California Obesity Prevention Plan is a call to action for stakeholders from all the identified sectors—State, Local, and Tribal Governments; Employers; Health Care; Families; Community Organizations; Schools; Child Care; Food and Beverage Industry; and Entertainment and Professional Sports—to work together to improve the health of all Californians.
Changing Students’ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavior in Relation to Food: An Evaluation of the School Lunch Initiative
This is the final report on the evaluation of the Berkeley School Lunch Initiative, by the Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Center for Weight and Health, University of California, Berkeley. The report was commissioned by the Chez Panisse Foundation.
The consumption of electrolyte replacement beverages, which are becoming increasingly popular in public schools, is associated with weight gain, diabetes and obesity. Beverage standards recommended by the Institute of Medicine call for the elimination of electrolyte replacement beverages from public schools to promote healthy beverage consumption.
We assessed the impact of legislation that established nutrition standards for foods and beverages that compete with reimbursable school meals in California. Regulation of competitive foods improved school food environments and student nutritional intake. Improvements were modest, partly because many compliant items are fat- and sugar-modified products of low nutritional value.
We examined whether new policies restricting sales in schools of so-called competitive foods and beverages—those that fall outside of what is served through federally reimbursed school meal programs— influenced increasing rates of overweight children in the Los Angeles Unified School District and the rest of California.
Fruits and vegetables are essential for the promotion of health and the prevention of chronic disease. Higher intake of fruits and vegetables has been associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and ischemic strokes —the three leading causes of death in the United States.
Dairy foods are important in a healthy diet—as long as they are lower-fat dairy. Whole-fat dairy products are high in saturated fats, which have been shown to raise blood cholesterol and increase the risk of heart disease. Whole-fat milk and cheese are among the leading sources of saturated fat in American diets.
