School Food

Background: Street food vending is a widespread and unique part of a large informal sector in most low-income countries including Ghana. The street food trade helps in meeting the food demands of individuals including children. However, safer food handling and hygiene of food is hard to practice because of the barriers that comes with the street food vending operation. Exposing consumers to food borne illnesses which has been a key concern for public health.

Aim:  This study seeks to gain insight into the operation of school food vendors, by analyzing and examining the barriers and opportunities in the provision of safer and hygienic foods by school food vendors in relation to school children health in Winneba, Ghana.

Method and theoretical framework: Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from 10 school food vendors, 8 key informants, 3 parents and a focus group discussion with school food vendors on the barriers and opportunities to safer and hygienic food provision. Observations on food safety practices at 10 school food-vending sites in Winneba were performed and recorded. Interview guides and analysis have been created on the basis of behaviour change model of health belief model.
Findings: The findings indicated that, safer and hygienic food provision by school food vendors help to maintain good health and improve the nutritional status of the school children. Also it serves as a means of livelihood for vendors which can be seen as an additional benefit, taking the vendors into consideration. Additionally, the study found out that the main challenges in the provision of safer and hygienic food included lack of training on basic food safety practices, poor environmental hygiene, poor personal hygiene and lack of knowledge on food safety practices by the school food vendors.

Conclusion and Recommendation:  A key policy priority should therefore be to plan a sustainable food safety intervention programs for school food vendors. This could be done through training on food hygiene and basic food safety practices for the improvement of knowledge, practice and attitude towards food safety.

Keywords: School food vending, Food safety, Food-borne diseases, School Children.

This study explored the impact of school eating environments on the wellbeing of children in the Full Day Kindergarten (FDK) Early Learning Program in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and compared childrens experiences of eating in FDK with those in childcare settings. Drawing on critiques of dominant approaches to evaluation, the study employed a wellbeing model that includes material security, relationship, engagement and meaning and used the Mosaic approach to participatory research with young children. Structured across three phases, the study followed a cohort of children in three childcare centre-school pairings as they transitioned from full-day childcare to full-day kindergarten. Phase 1 involved full-day observations, self-reported wellbeing, semi-structured interviews and drawings in the childcare centre. Phase 2 involved two visits and semi-structured interviews in the after-school care setting in the first months of kindergarten. Phase 3, like phase 1, involved full-day observations, self-reported wellbeing and semi-structured interviews in the classroom setting throughout the final six months of junior kindergarten (the first year of schooling in the province of Ontario, for children who turned four by December 31 of the school year). Whereas participants reported overwhelmingly positive feelings about lunch time in the childcare setting, reports in the FDK setting showed greater variation with few positive responses relating to the lunch experience itself. In interviews in the school setting, the child participants described not having enough time to eat their lunches, feeling sad that staff worked to prevent them from talking, and being happy about being able to choose some of the items in their lunches. Both parents and staff expressed concerns regarding the kindergarten eating environment and observations revealed the emergence of safety concerns, declining nutritional quality and confirmed both child and adult concerns. The study signals an opportunity for young children to meaningfully participate in wellbeing analyses of their environments. Furthermore, analysis suggests that the kindergarten eating environment is suboptimal and could be improved through the implementation of regulations and practices present in the childcare setting

Current research examining institutional purchasing motivated by values such as sustainability, healthfulness, or other social and environmental considerations tends to neglect the food workers tasked with preparing these foods for consumers. This chapter explores the impacts of such purchasing initiatives on the daily experiences and responsibilities of front-line workers in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). The School Food Focus “Making It Healthier, Making It Regional” project has examined meal program operations in six school districts that prioritize serving healthful and local food. We use data from observations of 23 schools, interviews with 21 cafeteria managers, and surveys of 147 cafeteria employees to describe the everyday experiences of school food service workers and document how they respond to integration of healthy and local purchases in their activities. We identify an unintended consequence of these procurement changes as producing additional workload that is not accounted for in the planning and implementation process. We conclude with a set of recommendations for stakeholders seeking to institute values-based procurement changes in the context of institutional food service that include provisions to safeguard staff from these unintended consequences and maintain and improve the quality of their jobs.

In this paper we argue for the use of the word ‘heritage’ when referring to children construction and transmission of their identity in relation to food (Hubert, 1994). We show that children construction of a food heritage is quite different from that of the adult world and it is characterized by the relationships and practices they develop with other peers in highly social contexts around food. We offer the concept of “eater-in-context” as a mechanism for examining how such process takes place.  To do that, we begin by unpacking three dimensions of ‘food heritage’, namely place, agents, and time involved in it, and propose to view those dimensions within school foodscapes (Mikkelsen, 2011; Johansson et al, 2009) to relate the material and immaterial aspects of children food heritage. Through two vignettes we ground our conceptual proposal, and discuss comparatively the theoretical and practical issues emerging out of such grounding and the relevance to the increasing concern with children eating practices in and out of schools.

Japji Anna Bas is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. She is a research and policy analyst with an interest in food policy, school food, international development and environmental politics. Her research explores the ways that public policy shapes social environments and thereby impacts personal well-being.

The role that food plays in a child’s capacity for success is well established. While many developed countries falter, Brazil’s comprehensive school feeding program continues to advance and become more substantive. Through historic participatory and interdisciplinary coaction between governments and civil society, Brazil has legislated right to food policies that ensure continued funding for free universal student feeding programs. These policies have radically improved the food security and health of school aged children, while also supporting a sustainable local food system. By mandating that 30 percent of the program’s food be purchased directly from local small-scale family farmers, these policies have created an integrated system that jointly prioritizes the health of school aged children and values the livelihood of small-scale family farmers.

Aim: Can high school gardens in cold climates influence vegetable intake in the absence of nutrition education?
Methods: This study followed a before/after design where students student tray waste data were collected using the Quarter-Waste method.THe study took place March-April 2012 in a high school in upstate New York. The subjects were 370 enrolled high school students that purchased lunch from the school cafeteria. Prior to the introduction of garden greens in the salad, salads were served as usual. On April 24, harvested greens were included in the salad, and changes in selection and plate waste was measured.
Results: When the salad bar contained garden produce, the percentage of students selecting salad rose from 2% to 10% (p<0.001), and on average, students ate two-thirds of the serving they took. Although waste increased relative to the control (from 5.56% to 33.33% per serving; p=0.007), more students were consuming at least some salad.
Conclusion: This preliminary investigation suggests that school gardens increased selection and intake of school-raised produce. Although a third was not eaten, it is promising to see that still more produce was consumed compared to the past.

Corporations rarely prioritize healthy communities over healthy profit margins, but their profits depend on community acceptance.  This article reveals that in their quest to be perceived as legitimate citizens, some corporations co-opt the rhetorical tactics typically associated with social movement organizations to frame their profit-maximizing practices as the solution to the problem of childhood obesity.  In this framing, explored here in an ethnography of the activities of two organizations called the Partnership for a Healthier America and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, obesity is the result of communities’ failure to work together and the cumulative effect of individuals’ bad choices.  By framing corporations as vital community partners poised to “work together” across sectors to solve the childhood obesity “crisis,” these organizations hope to inspire the public to participate in this imagined community in one predominant way:  by buying their products.  Despite the apparent power and reach of their framing, though, these corporations implicitly acknowledge that they are not and cannot be legitimate members of communities unless the public lets them.

Public health nutrition sits at the nexus of a global crisis in food, environmental and health systems that has generated - along with numerous other problems - an urgent and changing problem of food insecurity. The &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;new&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39; food insecurity, however, is different from the old: it is bimodal, encompassing issues of both under- and over-consumption, hunger and obesity, quantity and quality; it has assumed a decidedly urban dimension; and it implicates rich and poor countries alike. The complexity of the expressions of this challenge requires new approaches to public health nutrition and food policy that privilege systemic, structural and environmental factors over individual and mechanistic ones. In this context, the current paper argues that school food systems rise with buoyant potential as promising intervention sites: they are poised to address both modes of the food security crisis; integrate systemic, structural and environmental with behavioural approaches; and comprise far-reaching, system-wide efforts that influence the wider functioning of the food system. Based on a discussion of Bogotá and other pioneering policies that explicitly aim to create a broader food system with long-term foundations for good public health and food security, the paper suggests a new research and action agenda that gives special attention to school food in urban contexts.

Este estudo de caráter descritivo configura uma das respostas de projeto de pesquisa e extensão de parceria entre docentes e acadêmicos de uma instituição de ensino superior e um grupo de agricultoras familiares, proprietárias de uma pequena agroindústria no estado de Goiás. O objetivo foi implementar boas práticas de fabricação de alimentos com vistas à adequação sanitária de produtos destinados à comercialização para o Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar. Realizou-se o diagnóstico in loco do processo de trabalho desenvolvido pelas agricultoras e propôs-se um programa de formação em
Boas Práticas Agrícolas e Boas Práticas de Fabricação. A formação ocorreu em treze encontros presenciais, totalizando 100 horas com diferentes abordagens metodológicas.
Realizou-se também pesquisa da vida de prateleira e elaboração da rotulagem nutricional dos produtos fabricados. As análises microbiológicas realizadas obedeceram aos padrões
microbiológicos da Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária. Observou-se grande interesse das agricultoras nas atividades fundamentadas na construção coletiva. Definiu-se o prazo
de validade dos dezesseis produtos analisados e sua respectiva rotulagem. A atividade alcançou os objetivos propostos, como contribuição técnica e formação em boas práticas
a um grupo com potencial em atender às exigências sanitárias quanto à comercialização de alimentos oriundos da agricultura familiar para a alimentação escolar.

This paper takes up recent debates within Children’s Geographies as to the ‘usefulness’of theory and its application to school dining rooms. The paper argues that in particular, Foucault’s notions of governmentality have the potential to advance theoretical understandings of the spatiality of school dining rooms, the social relationships that occur within them and that in addition this can have relevant practical and policy implications that could impact upon the everyday lives of children that are both constituted by and constitutive of this space.