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Understanding why some elementary schools offer competitive snacks contrary to recommendations
Author(s) -
Gonzalez Wendy,
Jones Sonya J.,
Frongillo Edward A.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.23.1_supplement.735.3
Subject(s) - odds , consumption (sociology) , revenue , environmental health , logistic regression , snack food , cohort , business , marketing , medicine , food science , finance , social science , chemistry , sociology
US children have inadequate fruit and vegetable consumption. Schools have an important role to play in increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables. We previously found that children in schools with restricted competitive snack availability were less likely to report consuming fruits and vegetables throughout the day than children in schools without such restriction, supporting recommendations that schools should restrict snack availability. Snack sales are claimed, however, to provide important revenue to schools. To test this, we examined whether school resources (i.e., federal funding, personnel, facilities) are associated with snack availability using data from 1,318 schools from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Kindergarten cohort. With logistic regression, we found that, for schools with and without the School Breakfast Program, schools with adequate facilities were, respectively, 1.8 and 3.2 more likely to have snacks available than schools with inadequate facilities. For every five years of having the same principal in the school, there was a 12% lower odds of having snacks available. These results suggest that schools with capital resources to provide adequate facilities are more likely to make competitive snacks available, and that restricting snack availability may negatively impact school resources. Funded by: USDA/ERS