Congress is working on Child Nutrition Reauthorization, which has been delayed since 2015. The previous reauthorization resulted in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFKA). Despite the delay, a recent study shows that school meals are the single overall healthiest source of eating in the U.S., suggesting children's nutrition has fared well under HHFKA. Limitation of added sugars in school meals was not incorporated into the HHFKA, due in large part to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) anticipating that maximum calorie levels in school meals would effectively curb amounts of added sugars. However, this was not effective as a recent study showed that most schools exceeded the guideline of 10% of total calories daily limit for added sugars at both breakfast (92%) and lunch (69%). In their latest policy brief, Nutrition Policy Institute researchers in collaboration with Stanford Medicine Department of Pediatrics, Cultiva La Salud, and the Dolores Huerta Foundation, share findings from a research project involving San Joaquin Valley parents of children who receive school meals during COVID-19 related school closures. Parent experiences of school meals were collected from focus groups and PhotoVoice documentation of one week's worth of school meals. Parents expressed concern about the freshness, nutritional quality, and amount of added sugars in the school meals. The brief, entitled ‘School Meals: Kids are Sweeter with Less Sugar' presents parent photographs together with parent quotes and a brief summary of the background. It concludes with the policy recommendation that Congress, through Child Nutrition Reauthorization, direct USDA to implement a standard for added sugars that aligns with the current Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The brief is available online.
- Author: Danielle L. Lee
Sugar-sweetened beverages, including chocolate milk, are the leading source of added sugars in youths' diets. During the 2017-18 school year, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) implemented a policy removing chocolate milk from school lunches as part of a district-wide strategy to reduce students' intake of added sugars. A new research brief from the University of California, Nutrition Policy Institute (UC NPI) describes the impact of this policy on students' intake of milk and its associated nutrients. This impact was measured by UC researchers in a study of students' milk selection and consumption in 24 SFUSD middle and high schools during one lunch period at each school during each study year. The study included 3,158 students in 2016 before the policy and 2,966 students after the policy was implemented in 2018. Study results showed that after chocolate milk was removed, milk taking at lunch declined, but average per-student intake of key nutrients from milk did not. In addition, students' intake of added sugars from milk declined significantly. The study suggests that removing chocolate milk from school cafeterias may improve student nutrition. The research brief encourages schools to consider eliminating chocolate milk to help reduce students' added sugar intake. The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers at the UC NPI, UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Berkeley Food Institute, and SFUSD Student Nutrition Services. This work is supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative grant no. 2015-68001-23236 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The research brief is available online. The full research study is also available online.
Researchers at the Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI), University of California, Davis, and the University of South Carolina published a new study describing the use of factor analysis methods to evaluate the effectiveness of school nutrition environments on child health outcomes. Given the complexity of school food environments, factor analysis can be a useful method in identifying latent or unmeasured factors underlying observed environmental characteristics to determine which have the largest influence on child health outcomes. Researchers applied this method to data collected from the Healthy Communities Study which included 4,635 children in the US between the ages of four and 15 years from 386 elementary and middle schools in 2013–2015. Although the findings from the study were mixed, results suggest that restriction of unhealthy foods in school is associated with lower added sugar intake by children. The study was published online in March 2021 in The Journal of Nutrition. Co-authors include Marisa Tsai, Lorrene Ritchie, and Gail Woodward-Lopez from NPI, Lauren Au from the University of California, Davis, and Edward Frongillo from the University of South Carolina. The study was funded by a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
Nutrition Policy Institute's Lorrene Ritchie and Wendi Gosliner, in collaboration with Gurpinder Singh Lalli of the University of Wolverhampton, are guest editors of a Special Issue on “Improving School Nutrition: Innovations for the 21st Century” in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH). As guest editors, they are soliciting manuscript submissions for the Special Issue, which focuses on 21st-century global innovations in school nutrition to overcome challenges and improve the diet, food security, and ultimately the health and wellbeing of school-aged children. Topics of interest are organized in four overarching themes: (1) Food Security, Meal Participation, and Investments in School Food, (2) Nutrition in School Meals, (3) Environmental Sustainability, and (4) Food Literacy and Nutrition Education in Schools. In addition, manuscripts will be considered that cover cross-country comparisons of school nutrition models and outcomes; research on school nutrition from underrepresented regions; and recent lessons learned from adaptations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Manuscript types accepted include new research papers involving interventions, secondary data analyses, or qualitative data analyses, reviews, position papers, brief reports, and commentaries. The deadline for manuscript submissions is December 31, 2021. Information on the special issue and submission is available online.
- Author: Danielle L. Lee
The UC Nutrition Policy Institute submitted comments to the USDA on December 27, 2020 in opposition of a proposed rule to return flavored milk to school cafeterias. In their comment, NPI argues that reintroduction of chocolate milk into the USDA school breakfast and school lunch programs is "contrary to science" and would negate efforts to lower consumption of added sugars. The comment highlights a recent study by NPI in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, on the impact of removing chocolate milk from the school lunch program. The study examined the effects of removing chocolate milk as part of efforts to reduce added sugar from the lunch program at middle and high schools in the San Francisco Unified School District during the 2017-18 school year. The study assessed the effect of chocolate milk removal policy on student milk selection, waste, and overall consumption and to estimate changes in calcium, protein, vitamin D, and added sugar intake among racially/ethnically and socioeconomically diverse secondary school students. The study found that, despite a slight decrease in student milk consumption after the policy was passed, student intake of milk's key nutrients -- calcium, protein, and vitamin D -- were not reduced, nor was there any increase in milk waste. Furthermore, students' consumption of added sugar from milk declined significantly, thus achieving the district's purpose in removing chocolate milk. The comment was developed in collaboration with the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
