The development of a reliable and feasible measure of school children's fruit and vegetable consumption

Abstract

Feasible and reliable measurements of fruit and vegetable (F/V) consumption are needed that are based on children's actual consumption and are not subject to errors of children's self‐report. Our objective was to test the feasibility and reliability of three methods of assessing children's F/V consumption during lunch in two elementary school cafeterias. F/V consumption was assessed by weighed plate waste (WPW), direct observation (DO), and digital imaging (DI) during a training simulation and over ten school days. Feasibility was tested by the ability to assess F/V consumption for a target sample of at least 30–40 lunch trays during each school day. Interobserver reliability (IOR) was tested for DO and DI based on percent agreement for individual F/V item consumption and intraclass correlations (ICC) for total portions consumed per tray. WPW, DO, and DI assessed 340, 219, and 277 lunch trays respectively. Thirty‐one to 68 lunch trays were assessed during each school day, but no F/V items were selected on 15.2% of all trays. The net trays assessed for F/V consumption met or exceeded the target samples on all except one day, where 22% of participants did not select a F/V item. Percent agreement for DO was 93% and the ICC was 0.51. DI percent agreement was 96% and the ICC was 0.92. All methods were feasible for assessing F/V consumption during school lunch, but DI was more reliable than DO.Grant Funding Source: USDA ‐ Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station and the Bickford Scholar Research Fund