Summary of Think&EatGreen@School Research Projects and Databases:
Funded by:
/ /Think&EatGreen@School Mission
To contribute theoretical understanding (knowledge creation) and practical applications (action and knowledge mobilization) in the areas of food education across the curriculum, multi-level food system changes (in production, procurement, distribution, delivery, preparation, and end products recycling/composting) that will support regional food security, with an emphasis on environmental sustainability, human health and policy recommendations for schools.
Think&EatGreen@School Objectives
1. Develop and evaluate food-related curricula/activities focused on food system sustainability and institutional adaptations to climate change, grounded in a food security (Affordability, Accessibility, Appropriateness, Safety, Sustainability) paradigm;
2. Evaluate with the Vancouver School Board opportunities for policy development and adaptation to increase food security in schools, decrease environmental impacts of school food systems, and promote a sustainable regional food system;
3. Link theoretical learning to practical application to educate university, high school and elementary students, teachers, and citizens (ourselves included) with a sound knowledge of the relationships between food security, sustainability, human health, and climate change;
4. Pilot specific Community Impact Projects with engaged school communities and elsewhere, to investigate the adaptations needed to fulfill the above objectives;
5. Further develop the connections between community-based action research and community service learning [community-based experiential learning] in creating community-engaged scholarship;
6. Create connections between university and community that will extend beyond this project.
Think&EatGreen@School Research Questions
1. What are the best methods for building, managing, sustaining, and integrating into the curriculum school vegetable gardens and fruit orchards?
2. What are the best methods for increasing food and sustainability literacy amongst schoolteachers and students?
3. How can cafeterias and other school food services be integrated in the school curriculum to provide learning opportunities for all students to obtain fundamental skills of planning, preparing, cooking and consuming healthy, nutritious and wholesome meals within an agreeable, community-enhancing and inviting physical space?
4. How can community-engaged scholarship enhance undergraduate and graduate student learning of food systems sustainability?
5. What policy changes can be developed to create a sustainable school food system and at which appropriate level (school, school board, city, province) will these changes need to take place?
Defining Healthy and Sustainable Food Systems:
TEGS has adopted the “Principles of a Healthy and Sustainable Food System,” articulated by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly the American Dietetic Association), American Nurses Association, American Planning Association, and American Public Health Association (2010), as an appropriate description of our aim. Please refer to these principles for additional clarification regarding what is meant by a ‘healthy, sustainable (school) food system.’ The document is available online at: www.apha.org/NR/rdonlyres/D522083F-4F18-428F-A9EC-818690906E4F/0/HealthySustainableFoodSystemsPrinciples_2012May.pdf
Description of Strategies and Tools for Data Collection
A. School Food Environment Assessment Tool (SF-EAT)
To inform the collaborative work of the Think&EatGreen@School project, we developed the School Food Environment Assessment Tools (SF-EAT). This tool is helping us learn about the food-related activities, policies and initiatives already underway in Vancouver schools and where future efforts could be focused.
Specific Objectives of SF-EAT
· To gain a baseline understanding of the food environments in Vancouver schools
· To better understand the needs, interests and challenges of Think&EatGreen@School partners regarding school food and food education
· To develop indicators to assess the impacts of various food-related projects and initiatives
Schools were visited in September – December 2011 and November 2012 – April 2013
· 33 schools participated (from all six geographic sectors of the Vancouver Board of Education)
o 18 Elementary Schools
o 15 Secondary Schools
Undergraduate and graduate student researchers collected data from direct observations of schools’ physical food environments (including cafeterias, vending machines, and school stores) and interviews with key school personnel (e.g., administrators, food service workers, and teachers). The data has been systematized, analyzed and a scholarly paper has been accepted for publication pending revisions (see below for abstract).
Abstract
Objective: This study describes the development and application of the School Food Environment Assessment Tools (SFEAT). The SFEAT include a novel and pragmatic scoring system to assess the extent to which schools have integrated healthy and environmentally sustainable food initiatives, and to identify opportunities for further progress.
Design: This cross sectional study included direct observations of physical food environments (including cafeterias, vending machines, and school stores), and interviews with key school personnel (e.g., administrators, food service workers, and teachers) regarding food-related programs and policies. A five-point scoring system was then developed to assess actions across six domains: 1) food gardens 2) composting systems 3) food preparation 4) food-related teaching and learning activities, and availability of 5) healthy food and 6) environmentally sustainable food.
Setting: Vancouver, Canada
Subjects: A socio-demographically and geographically diverse purposive sample of public elementary and secondary schools (n=33), from all six geographic sectors of the Vancouver Board of Education.
Results: Overall, schools scored highest in the areas of food garden and compost system development and use. Regular integration of food-related teaching and learning activities and hands-on food preparation experiences were also commonly reported. Most schools demonstrated rudimentary efforts to make healthy and environmentally sustainable food choices available, but in general, scored lowest on these two domains. Moreover, no schools reported widespread initiatives fully supporting availability or integration of healthy or environmentally sustainable food across campus.
Conclusions: More work is needed in all areas to fully integrate programs and policies that support healthy, environmentally sustainable food systems in Vancouver schools. The assessment tools and proposed indicators offer a practical approach for researchers, policy makers and school stakeholders to assess school food system environments, identify priority areas for intervention and track relevant changes over time.
B. Food Practices on School Days Study / Individual Eating Assessment Tool (I-EAT)
Why is UBC doing this study?
Researchers, policy makers and school communities have a lot to learn about how best to support schools in creating school food environments that make it easy for students to make healthy food choices that have a minimal impact on the environment.
What is the “Food Practices on School Days Study”?
The “Food Practices on School Days Study” was designed to shed some light on this area of interest. The research team worked closely with the rest of the Think&EatGreen@School team to learn more about students’ dietary choices on school days, and how students’ attitudes towards food and the wider school food environment influence food choices.
With the full support of the Think&EatGreen@School team, and thanks largely to funding support from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) and the UBC Food Nutrition and Health Vitamin Research Fund, our team has been able to work with 26 schools across the city of Vancouver to discover what students eat and drink on school days and the potential impact of the school and surrounding neighbourhood food environments on students’ dietary choices. The team developed a web-based survey tool that is now known as “I-EAT” – the Individual Eating Assessment Tool, which was used to collect the data. The survey included a food frequency questionnaire and was used to assess student demographic characteristics, participation in School Food and Nutrition Programs, and dietary psychosocial and behavioural outcomes.
Between March and June 2012, we were able to survey 950 students in grades 5-8 from both Vancouver elementary and secondary schools.
· 26 schools participated (from all six geographic sectors of the Vancouver Board of Education)
o 20 Elementary Schools
o 6 Secondary Schools
What is the goal of this study?
The I-EAT tool provides a deeper understanding of:
· Where and how often students procure and consume food on school days.
· The frequency of consuming fruits and vegetables, sugar sweetened beverages, processed snack foods, low fat milk, whole grain foods, and environmentally sustainable choices such as local food and items in recyclable or compostable packaging, on school days.
· The frequency of food practices such as purchasing from particular sources (e.g. convenience stores) and composting leftover food at school.
· Students’ knowledge, self-efficacy and attitudes related to healthy and sustainable eating and food preparation.
· How participation in and level of engagement with school food programs (including Think&EatGreen@School related projects) is associated with students’ expectations, attitudes and/or practices related to food.
In addition to learning more about students’ dietary choices and the factors influencing these choices, the important information we collected from this study helps us to better understand the number of students taking part in school activities promoting healthy and environmentally sustainable foods, which in turn helps our team learn how best to support schools in promoting healthy and environmentally sustainable food choices in the future.
What are we working on now?
We have collected valuable information through our surveys of Vancouver students, and two Master’s theses have been completed and successfully defended based on these data. A scholarly paper has also been published, another is under review, and one is nearly ready to submit. To learn more about our research team and some of the key research topics of focus, please check back on the TEGS website.
Scholarly papers:
· Public Health Nutrition 2014 Aug 7:1-10. [Epub ahead of print]
Title: Associations between socio-economic status and school-day dietary intake in a sample of grade 5-8 students in Vancouver, Canada.
Ahmadi N, Black JL, Velazquez CE, Chapman GE, Veenstra G.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE:
To examine associations between students' socio-economic status (SES) and school-day dietary intake, and the roles of parents and peers in shaping these associations.
DESIGN:
A cross-sectional survey measured school-day intake of vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk, packaged snack foods and sugar-sweetened beverages. Logistic regression models examined associations between SES (parental education and food insecurity status) and dietary outcomes during or en route to or from school, and examined whether peer modeling or parental norms potentially mediated the associations between SES and dietary outcomes.
SETTING:
Twenty-six public schools in Vancouver, Canada in 2012.
SUBJECTS:
Nine hundred and fifty students in grades 5-8.
RESULTS:
Students whose parents completed some college, compared with those completing high school or less, were significantly more likely to consume vegetables daily (unadjusted OR=1·85; 95 % CI 1·06, 3·22) and students whose parents completed college or university were significantly less likely to consume sugar-sweetened beverages daily (unadjusted OR=0·67; 95 % CI 0·47, 0·94). Food secure students were also significantly less likely to consume sugar-sweetened beverages daily compared with food insecure students (unadjusted OR=0·52; 95 % CI 0·29, 0·92). Parental norms, but not peer modeling, emerged as a potential mediator of the association between SES and vegetable intake. SES was not significantly associated with the remaining dietary outcomes.
CONCLUSIONS:
Higher SES was significantly associated with two of five school-day dietary outcomes and predicted higher likelihood of daily nutritious food choices at school. The present study suggests that there is room for improvement in school-day dietary quality for students from all SES backgrounds in Vancouver.
· Paper under review at the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
Title: Differences in School-Day Dietary Practices between Elementary and Secondary School Students in Vancouver
Velazquez, Black, Billette, Ahmadi and Chapman
Abstract
There is evidence that dietary quality declines as children age; but relatively little is known about how or why school-day food practices change as students transition to secondary school in Canada. This study therefore examined differences in dietary practices between students in their last years of elementary school (grades 5-7) and first year of secondary school (grade 8) in Vancouver, Canada. Student-level demographic characteristics and dietary data were collected through a cross-sectional survey (n=950 from 26 schools) and combined with school-level socioeconomic data. Multi-level logistic regression analyses found that secondary school students were significantly more likely to report daily consumption of fast foods (OR=1.92; 95%CI=1.18, 3.12) and minimally nutritious packaged snacks (e.g., candy or chocolate bars) (OR=1.60; 95%CI=1.05, 2.45), and to regularly purchase food from off-campus retailers (OR=1.63; 95% CI=1.10, 2.42) in multivariate models. Moreover, male gender, food insecurity, lower acculturation to Canada, and access to more weekly spending money emerged as salient predictors of nutritionally-poor practices. Students attending schools drawing from lower income neighborhoods were also significantly more likely to consume fast foods and packaged snacks daily. Findings highlight differences in adverse dietary outcomes between elementary and secondary school students of similar ages, and indicate that differences can to some extent be attributed to school-level socio-economic characteristics. On the other hand, consumption of nutritious foods such as fruit and vegetables was not well explained by variables examined here. Future research should examine modifiable school-level exposures and policies to improve dietary practices of youth, while at the same time, addressing socio-cultural determinants of eating behavior.
· Paper to be submitted to the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behaviour (Stephens, Black, Chapman, Velazquez, and Rojas)
Objective: Numerous School Food and Nutrition Programs (SFNPs) are emerging in North America, but little is known about the extent of student engagement. This study therefore characterized SFNP participation and differences by gender and between elementary and secondary school students in a city with strong government, school-board and grassroots support for food system improvement.
Design: Cross-sectional survey
Setting: Vancouver
Participants: Grade 6-8 students (n=937) from 20 public elementary and 6 secondary schools.
Variables Measured: SFNP participation, school type, and gender.
Analyses: Descriptive statistics and Rao-Scott corrected chi-square tests.