State Legislation Related to School Nutrition: Predictors of Bill Passage From 2010-2019.

Objective: This study aimed to discover the prevalence of school nutrition state legislation and to identify the correlates of enactment.

Design, Setting, And Participants: An online legislative database, Legiscan, was used to collect bills related to school nutrition from the US from 2010 to 2019. Bills were coded and compiled into a study database with state-level dietary variables (obesity prevalence, fruit, and vegetable intake, sugar-sweetened beverage consumption), community variables (percent White, poverty), and bill-characteristic variables (party affiliation in legislature, strength of language, party of governor, school gardens, vegetable intake, and other salient variables).

Competitive Foods' Nutritional Quality and Compliance with Smart Snacks Standards: An Analysis of a National Sample of U.S. Middle and High Schools.

Snacks and beverages are often sold in addition to meals in U.S. schools ("competitive foods"), but their current nutritional quality and compliance with national Smart Snacks standards are unknown.

Healthy School Meals for All in Utah.

Background: The National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs reduce food insecurity and improve dietary intake. During the COVID-19 pandemic, school meals were provided to all children at no cost, regardless of income. This policy is known as Healthy School Meals For All (HSMFA).

Race/Ethnicity Predicts School Meal Participation.

Background: School meals have demonstrated positive effects on dietary habits of children and adolescents, yet opportunities to increase participation exist. Little is known about how participation differs by race/ethnicity or by acculturation levels, thus this study aims to identify acculturation and race/ethnicity on school meal participation of middle school students.

Methods: A national convenience sample of adolescents (n = 617) was recruited to participate in a survey about acculturation and obesogenic behaviors through a Qualtrics panel.

Beyond Proximity: Utility-Based Access from Location-Based Services Data.

Understanding who in a community has access to its resources-parks, libraries, grocery stores, etc.-has profound equity implications, but typical methods to understand access to these resources are limited. Travel time buffers require researchers to assert mode of access as well as an arbitrary distance threshold; further, these methods do not distinguish between destination quality attributes in an effective way.

Driving Distance and Food Accessibility: A Geospatial Analysis of the Food Environment in the Navajo Nation and Border Towns.

The Navajo Nation, an area home to approximately 173,000 people in the southwest United States, experiences the highest rates of food insecurity in the United States and is classified as a food desert. The present study assessed the accessibility to food outlets (grocery stores, convenience stores, and restaurants) as measured by driving time on the Navajo Nation and in selected surrounding border towns. Food outlets located in neighboring border towns were examined using network analysis tools in ArcGIS Pro to calculate driving distance and examine the potential impact of driving time within the Navajo Nation on accessibility to nutritious foods.

School Nutrition Professionals' Experiences with Food Safety and Special Diets in School Meals during the Initial COVID-19 Pandemic.

Abstract: Federally funded school meals, such as the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program, can help alleviate food insecurity. Meals served as part of these programs are required by law to be modified when medically necessary, such as food allergies and special diets. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused many schools across the United States to close, but schools quickly modified meal-serving models.

An Educational Intervention for Improving the Snacks and Beverages Brought to Youth Sports in the USA.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to test a small-scale intervention and its ability to decrease total sugar intake and number of calories offered at youth sports games.

Methods: This study was a pre/post-test quasi-experimental design. A flier was developed and distributed to parents.

Parent-Child Relationships and the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Exploratory Qualitative Study with Parents in Early, Middle, and Late Adulthood.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on families is currently unknown. Parents and children have experienced a variety of changes as public health interventions have been implemented to slow the spread of the virus. The current exploratory qualitative study recruited parents ( = 365) in early (ages 20-34), middle (ages 35-64), and late (ages 65 and older) adulthood to understand how the early weeks of the pandemic influenced their parent-child relationships.

Disaster Management and School Nutrition: A Qualitative Study of Emergency Feeding During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Background: School nutrition programs mitigate child food insecurity across the United States. With the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, kindergarten through grade 12 physical school campuses closed, which led to those programs transitioning to emergency feeding. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction has 4 action priorities that guided the assessment of school nutrition employees' emergency response during the COVID-19 pandemic.

School Nutrition Professionals' Employee Safety Experiences During the Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Objective: To explore the real-time personal/employee safety experiences and perspectives of school nutrition professionals ranging from frontline staff to state leadership across the US as they responded to the initial weeks of the coronavirus pandemic.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was administered electronically March 31-April 20, 2020, to school nutrition staff, managers, directors, and state agency personnel. Descriptive statistics were calculated, and a thematic analysis of an open-ended item was conducted.

Diet Quality Is Lower for Those Who Skip Lunch Among a Sample of Predominantly Black Adolescents.

Purpose: To compare the dietary quality among adolescents who skip lunch and those who do not and explore associations between school-level variables, demographic variables and lunch skipping.

Design: Cross-sectional.

Setting: Public schools in New Orleans, Louisiana (n = 21).

Do Youth Consume More Calories than they Expended in Youth Sports Leagues? An Observational Study of Physical Activity, Snacks, and Beverages.

Childhood obesity rates remain high. The youth sports environment is an opportunity to combat obesity. The purpose of this study was to determine the types of beverages/ snacks provided at youth sports and determine associations between energy consumption and expenditure.

Teachers' Experience and Perspectives of Traditional Breakfast and Breakfast in the Classroom.

Objective: To understand teachers' perceptions about Breakfast in the Classroom and traditional breakfast.

Design: An electronic survey was sent to teachers across the state of Utah. Teachers responded to an open-ended question exploring what they liked and/or disliked about Breakfast in the Classroom and traditional breakfast.

Who Eats School Breakfast? Parent Perceptions of School Breakfast in a State With Very Low Participation.

Background: Having breakfast is correlated with health and academic benefits; yet, many children do not consume breakfast, and participation in the federal School Breakfast Program remains low. The purpose of this study was to examine parent perceptions of school breakfast and identify relationships between those who consume breakfast at school and those who do not.

Methods: A random sample of 100 schools, representing 29 school districts, across the state of Utah was selected to participate in the survey.

Lunch Salad Bars in New Orleans' Middle and High Schools: Student Intake of Fruit and Vegetables.

The school lunch salad bar (SB) is a recommended food environmental strategy to increase access to, and consumption of fruit and vegetables (F/V). In a study to examine use of school lunch SBs, middle and high school students provided data via the Automated Self-Administered 24-h dietary recall (24HDR) tool for kids (ASA24-Kids-2012), a web-based data collection platform. Kilocalories were computed, food groups were assigned and F/V sources were obtained.

The FIT Game III: Reducing the Operating Expenses of a Game-Based Approach to Increasing Healthy Eating in Elementary Schools.

Objective: Previously published versions of the healthy eating "FIT Game" were administered by teachers in all grades at elementary schools. The present study evaluated whether the game would retain its efficacy if teachers were relieved of this task; presenting instead all game materials on visual displays in the school cafeteria.

Materials And Methods: Participants were 572 children attending two Title 1 elementary schools (grades K-5).

Individual- and School-Level Factors Related to School-Based Salad Bar Use Among Children and Adolescents.

Background: Consumption levels of fruits and vegetables (F/V) among children/adolescents are low. Programs like school-based salad bars (SB) provide children/adolescents increased F/V access.

Aims: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between SB use and individual and school-level factors among elementary and secondary school students in New Orleans public schools.