Abstract
Interventions to support healthy eating among populations are needed to address diet-related chronic disease. Recreation and sport settings are increasingly identified as ideal settings for promoting overall health, particularly for children, through creation of environments that support positive health behaviours. These publicly funded settings typically support health through physical activity promotion. However, the food environment within them is often not reflective of nutrition guidelines. As more jurisdictions release nutrition guidelines in such settings, the purpose of this study was to assess whether voluntary nutrition guidelines, released in 2015 in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, had any impact on food environments in these settings. Baseline and follow-up audits of food environments were conducted one year before (in 30 facilities) and one year after guideline release (in 27 facilities). Audits involved classifying all foods and beverages within vending machines and concessions as Do Not Sell, Minimum, Moderate, or Maximum nutrition, using criteria provided in the guidelines. The proportion of items within each category was calculated, and differences from pre- to post-guideline release were assessed using Chi-squared statistics. Results indicated limited change in food and beverage provision from pre- to post- guideline release. In fact, from pre- to post-guideline release, the proportion of Do Not Sell vending beverages and concession foods increased significantly, while Maximum concession beverages decreased, suggesting a worsening of the food environment post-guideline release. Findings suggest that voluntary guidelines alone are insufficient to improve food environments in recreation and sport settings. For widespread changes in the food environment of these settings to occur, more attention needs to be paid to reducing social, cultural, political and economic barriers to change (real and perceived) that have been identified in these settings, alongside developing leadership and capacity within facilities, to ensure that positive changes to food environments can be implemented and sustained.
Highlights
Interventions to support healthy eating among populations are needed to address diet-related chronic disease [1,2]
As more jurisdictions release nutrition guidelines in such settings, the purpose of this study was to assess whether voluntary nutrition guidelines, released in 2015 in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, had any impact on food environments in these settings
Some provinces have released nutrition guidelines for recreation and sport settings (RSS) to support provision of healthy foods within these settings [13,15]. Such an approach was recently undertaken in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia with the release of the Healthy Eating in Recreation and Sport Settings (HERSS) voluntary guidelines in the Fall of 2015 [16]
Summary
Recreation and sport settings (RSS) are increasingly identified as ideal settings for promoting overall health among children, through creation of environments that support positive health behaviours [4,5,6,7,8] These publicly funded settings offer context for engaging a variety of community members with health messaging, including recreation participants spanning all ages and abilities [4]. Such an approach was recently undertaken in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia with the release of the Healthy Eating in Recreation and Sport Settings (HERSS) voluntary guidelines in the Fall of 2015 [16] These guidelines were developed in partnership with stakeholders from health and recreation organizations across Nova Scotia and align with the province’s existing school food and nutrition policy [16]. A number of studies have examined the role of these guidelines in supporting healthier food environments [9,10,11,12], AIMS Public Health
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