| Project: Evaluation of Policy Change on Middle School Student Lunch Consumption |
| Award Year: 2002 |
| Amount of award, fiscal 2002: $179,396.00 |
| Institution: Baylor College of Medicine |
| Principal Investigator: Karen Cullen |
| Status: Completed |
| Detailed Objective: The goal of this project is to document and analyze consumption by middle school students before and after a district policy change in Pasadena, Texas, that enforces an existing ban on the availability of certain competitive foods at lunch. The study will examine consumption of meals provided by the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), snack bars, and vending machines; weight status; and lunch consumption of fat, total energy, and fruits and vegetables. The data will include baseline lunch food records and point-of-sale data, which were collected prior to the change as part of a separate study during the 2001-2002 school year. Lunch records, cafeteria point-of-sale data, and student weight data will be collected during the 2002-03 school year from seven middle schools with 4000 students, in order to test a number of hypotheses about the impact of the policy change. These hypotheses include: (1) whether daily purchases of fruits and vegetables increase after the change; (2) whether purchases of high-fat and high-sugar foods decrease; (3) whether student consumption of total kilocalories and kilocalories from fat decrease, (4) whether students who consumed snack bar and vending machine lunches consume more total kilocalories and more kilocalories from fat than those who consumed the NSLP meal; (5) whether weight status varies by usual meal source (NSLP, snack bar, vending machine, other); and (6) whether lunch consumption of fruits and vegetables, fat, and total kilocalories varies by weight status. |
| Topic: Child Nutrition, Dietary Intake and Quality, School Lunch and Breakfast |
Output:
Cullen, K., K. Watson, and I. Zakeri. Middle School Student Lunch Consumption: Impact of National School Lunch Program Meal and Competitive Foods, Contractor and Cooperator Report No. 30, USDA, ERS, June 2007.
Cullen, K., K. Weber, K. Watson, I. Zakeri, and K. Ralston. "Exploring Changes on Middle School Lunch Consumption After Local School Food Service Policy Modifications," Public Health Nutrition, Vol. 9, No. 6, September 2006. |