Abstract
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA), a public law in the United States passed in 2010, sought to improve the healthfulness of the school food environment by requiring updated nutrition standards for school meals and competitive foods. Studies conducted since the passage of the HHFKA indicate improvements in the food environment overall, but few studies have examined whether these improvements varied by the socioeconomic and racial/ethnic composition of students in schools. To better understand the extent of disparities in the school food environment after HHFKA, this paper examined differences in the healthfulness of school food environments and the nutritional quality of school lunches by the school poverty level and racial/ethnic composition of students using data from the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study. Results from chi-square analyses showed lower proportions of high poverty, majority black, and majority Hispanic schools had access to competitive foods, while higher proportions of these schools had a school wellness policy in addition to a district wellness policy. The overall nutritional quality of school lunches, as measured by total Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2010 scores, did not vary significantly across school types, although some HEI component scores did. From these findings, we concluded that there were disparities in the school food environment based on the socioeconomic and racial/ethnic composition of students in schools, but no significant disparities in the overall nutritional quality of school lunches were found.
Highlights
Children in the United States spend a significant portion of their waking hours at school and consume more than one-third of their total daily calorie intake while there [1]
Pearson chi-square tests were used to test for statistical significance of differences in analyses related to school food environments
Past research has found limited evidence of disparities in the healthfulness of school food environments in the United States, but few studies have explored the prevalence of these disparities since the passage of the HHFKA
Summary
Children in the United States spend a significant portion of their waking hours at school and consume more than one-third of their total daily calorie intake while there [1]. Research has shown that schools play an integral role in shaping the dietary behaviors of children [2,3,4]. Policymakers and practitioners have viewed the school food environment as a critical setting for influencing children’s eating behaviors and reducing childhood obesity [5,6,7]. In communities with less access to healthy food, schools may provide a important opportunity to positively impact student’s health, especially as research has shown that living in low-income and minority communities is linked to poorer diet quality for children [8,9,10], which in turn can lead to adverse health outcomes [11,12,13]. Most schools provide students with access to meals through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the Nutrients 2020, 12, 2375 ; doi:10.3390/nu12082375 www.mdpi.com/journal/nutrients
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