Breakfast Club Research Articles

The importance of a healthy breakfast to start the school day

Dorothy Lepkowska looks at the importance of breakfast as part of a healthy diet, the impact skipping breakfast can have on children and young people's learning and health and the benefits of breakfast clubs in schools.

Fan Labor and Feminism: Capitalizing on the Fannish Labor of Love

Fan Labor and Feminism:Capitalizing on the Fannish Labor of Love Kristina Busse, editor (bio) In the early 2000s, my three-year-old son wanted a Doctor Who birthday party. He had been watching old 1980s-era PBS recordings on our VHS, and he couldn’t understand why the party stores didn’t have the Fourth Doctor next to Buzz Lightyear and Arthur paraphernalia. Now, ten years later, when I research fannish cakes, I find entire commercial cooking programs dedicated to baking a TARDIS-shaped cake, along with Doctor Who party- and bakeware. One reason for this change is clearly the resurgence of the Doctor Who franchise (BBC, 1963–1989, 1996, 2005–) and its wider popularity than before. Clearly, this amount of fan merchandise for even marginal shows is a recent phenomenon, testifying to both the expansion of media tiein commercialization and the increased popularity of fan and geek cultures. Twenty years ago, our Doctor Who mugs were a special PBS fund-raising gift; today, there is merchandise available not only for the most niche shows but also for specific fans: if you want a T-shirt, tote bag, or iPhone case dedicated to Superwholock (the slashy Doctor Who / Supernatural / Sherlock crossover of “Hunters and Doctors and Boys from Baker Street”), there are dozens of designs and options available on sites that cater directly to this audience. As an aca-fan, I am of two minds about this phenomenon. The acceptance of fans, geeks, and nerds is theoretically and personally satisfying, as is the increased popularity of geeky media, and consequently the more positive media portrayals. The freaks and geeks of my teenage years have given way to more affectionate and certainly more nuanced portrayals: Anthony Michael Hall’s eternally geeky outcast of [End Page 110] the 1985 film The Breakfast Club (John Hughes) has become the entire cast of The Big Bang Theory (CBS, 2007– ). Where the stereotypical geek model used to be drawn from Revenge of the Nerds (Jeff Kanew, 1984), it is now written by Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen and played by Michael Cera. Yet even as we witness an increase in positive male geeks on-screen, female media representations remain few and far between. Mayim Bialik’s Amy Farrah Fowler in The Big Bang Theory and Felicia Day’s Charlie Bradbury in Supernatural (WB/CW, 2005– ) are exceptions rather than the rule and are celebrated as such. Day has advocated, in and out of character, for female fans, and she does so in an otherwise not very female fan-friendly show as the young, queer, geeky, and unashamedly fannish Charlie. Any spread in popularity carries with it a danger of further segregating the remaining outsiders: if the mainstream embraces one form of geek, it risks excluding further or even negating the existence of whoever does not fit that new model. Mel Stanfill describes this as “moving the bar” in terms of queer homonormativity, where “the norm gets to congratulate itself on its tolerance” while those not able and willing to assimilate “get forcefully produced as unassimilable and Other.”1 In particular, the widespread embrace of the white middle-class heterosexual male geek in popular culture redefines but does not erase boundaries of exclusion.2 As fandom has entered the mainstream, and as the bar moves to include more diverse groups of fans and more varied forms of fannish engagement, the study of fans and fandom has become ever more important. That increased interest is most apparent when looking at the number of books, articles, conferences, and panels that focus on fan studies more broadly. Yet even here one can recognize a shift toward industry and production. Whereas early work in fan studies looked toward the fan communities and their countercultural productions, many of the field’s recent monographs focus on industry connections.3 Such a shift often celebrates the new industry-fan model, “an emerging hybrid model of circulation, where a mix of top-down and bottom-up forces determine how material is shared across and among cultures in far more participatory (and messier) ways,” in which supposedly everyone wins.4 Within and without such a commercialization of fan spaces, however, many important questions remain...

The effect of using isomaltulose (Palatinose™) to modulate the glycaemic properties of breakfast on the cognitive performance of children.

PurposeAlthough previous research has associated the glycaemic load (GL) of a meal with cognitive functioning, typically the macro-nutrient composition of the meals has differed, raising a question as to whether the response was to GL or to the energy, nutrients or particular foods consumed. Therefore, the present study contrasted two breakfasts that offered identical levels of energy and macro-nutrients, although they differed in GL.MethodsUsing a repeated-measures, double-blind design, 75 children aged 5–11 years, from socially deprived backgrounds, attended a school breakfast club and on two occasions, at least a week apart, they consumed a meal sweetened with either isomaltulose (Palatinose™) (GL 31.6) or glucose (GL 59.8). Immediate and delayed verbal memory, spatial memory, sustained attention, reaction times, speed of information processing and mood were assessed 1 and 3 h after eating.ResultsThe nature of the meals did not influence any measure of cognition or mood after an hour; however, after 3 h, children’s memory and mood improved after the lower-GL breakfast. If children had eaten the lower-GL meal on the second day of testing, they were able to process information faster and had better spatial memory later in the morning.ConclusionsTowards the end of a morning in school, having consumed a lower-GL breakfast resulted in better mood and aspects of cognitive functioning.

The contribution of breakfast to nutrition for low-income families

Low-income families tend to have poorer diets than the wider population, which may be detrimental to nutritional status and health outcomes. Breakfast is an important meal and there is evidence that it may promote nutrient intake, help to prevent weight gain, prevent unhealthy snacking, support memory and learning and, for children in social situations such as breakfast clubs, increase socialisation and prevent bad behaviour. This article looks at how low income may affect nutritional status, how this may add to inequalities suffered and how breakfast can contribute to a more nutritionally balanced diet with better health outcomes.

Education, mobility and the zone defense in suburban American narratives

Abstract Slums of Beverly Hills and The Breakfast Club show that the key to class mobility is affordable housing in an otherwise high-dollar school district. This residential basis to the interconnection of romance, education and class mobility in suburban high school movies reveals zoning as the essential foundation to the suburban way of life. The logic of zoning is the imagination and ideology of American suburbia, promising universal mobility only to circumscribe it spatially. Zoning’s ‘rational’ delineation of allowable building is of paramount concern to mobility or economic inequality. Actually, existing zoning is the key ideological component to suburban life, which makes its invisibility in literary and film studies troubling. Slums of Beverly Hills and The Breakfast Club solve the problems of suburban inequality discursively; Brian and Vivian only change their thinking about the organization of their families, educations and social interactions, not the spatial organization of their home town. Suburban high school films continue to believe in the promise of class mobility that zoning-enabled and facilitated education holds out, the very definition of an ideological solution to the problem rather than a concrete change to the built environment.

School food in England: Are we getting it right?

School food in <scp>E</scp>ngland: Are we getting it right?

Nursery Food: Breakfast clubs - Rise and shine!

Breakfast clubs are playing an increasingly important role in the early years. Katy Morton reports.

The Cinematic Quiet Girl from The Breakfast Club to the Badlands

This essay is intended to counteract the omission of the quiet girl from critical media thought and to recuperate her for film history and feminism. The quiet girl is a visible presence across numerous films and genres, from heartfelt melodramas like Corrina, Corrina to gruesome horrors like Carrie. Within these diverse texts, the quiet girl represents a consistent threat to authority. She keeps her thoughts to herself and, as such, just beyond the reach of other's surveillance, delineation and control. Her silences unravel the self-certainty of others and deny them access and closure. But, the threat the quiet girl poses is always in danger of being contained via her transformation into a more outgoing—that is, more knowable—version of herself. If all else fails, the quiet girl risks banishment or death. One text that circumvents the containment of the quiet girl, however, is Badlands. In Badlands, the girl protagonist's increasing silence over the course of the film coincides with her increasing freedom from male rule, suggesting the potential that silence holds for girls and feminism.

The earthquake observers: disaster science from Lisbon to Richter; The philosophical breakfast club; Reforming philosophy: a Victorian debate on science and society

The earthquake observers: disaster science from Lisbon to Richter; The philosophical breakfast club; Reforming philosophy: a Victorian debate on science and society

Breakfast consumption in UK schoolchildren and provision of school breakfast clubs

SummaryBreakfast is known to confer benefits for children, including improvement in nutrient and weight status as well as cognitive performance. Reliable UK‐specific data regarding breakfast consumption patterns in schoolchildren and the provision of breakfast clubs in schools are limited, but are required to inform academics and policy makers alike. The aim of this study was to establish patterns in breakfast consumption in UK schoolchildren and to assess the current provision of breakfast clubs in England. Data were gathered by Childwise in June–July 2011. The large population representative sample included a total of 65 schools (38 primary and 27 secondary), from which 3311 children aged 5–15 years were surveyed at school regarding their breakfast consumption. Data regarding school breakfast club provision were collected from 2087 teachers via the National Foundation for Educational Research omnibus. The results indicated that 86% of children ate something before school (whether at home, on the way to school or at a school breakfast club). Of the remaining 14% of breakfast skippers, a third reported not eating anything until lunch time. The extent of breakfast skipping was higher in girls than boys, and higher in secondary than primary school pupils. Breakfast skipping also varied by UK region, such that the highest levels were evident in Scotland and the North West of England, and the lowest in the East of England. Within secondary schools, breakfast skipping was higher in schools from urban areas and areas of high deprivation. Of the 86% of children who did eat breakfast, 4% reported consuming it at a school breakfast club and a further 4% on the way to school. In contrast, 56% of schools in England were found to be operating a breakfast club at the time of survey, with greater availability at primary compared with secondary school. Overall, the findings suggest that breakfast skipping remains a considerable problem in UK schoolchildren, particularly in adolescents.

Transforming the traditional sitcom: Abed in Community

At first glance, NBC’s freshman comedy Community appears to be the perfect example of a high-concept sitcom: the main character Jeff Winger is a lawyer who has been disbarred for fake diplomas, and who therefore has to go back to school at a community college in order to regain his job. He is surrounded by fellow students, the stereotypical misfits that people sitcoms: the matronly single black mother, the uptight overachiever, the dumb and arrogant jock, the attractive hippy (and love interest), and the retiree going back to school, whose cluelessness is butt of the majority of the jokes. However, a final character, Abed, seems almost extraneous to the proceedings: he is a half Polish, half Palestinian film student, who suffers from Asperger’s and therefore has a difficult time understanding the relationships around him. Like Pierce, Abed would seem to be the odd man out, the source of much of the humor for the series; but in fact he serves an entirely different purpose. As a film student who was “raised by television”, Abed is constantly comparing events in the episodes to films and television series, thus immediately identifying the group as “The Breakfast Club” in the pilot episode, or proving capable of flirting with the opposite sex only when channeling Don Draper of Mad Men fame. This could be seen as a simple nod to the formulaic nature of the sitcom, an ironic wink to the viewer, but as the series progresses, Abed and his pop culture references take on increasing importance. His knowledge of genre rules becomes an almost divinatory power: once he begins taking film classes, his shorts about the group of friends actually predicts the future of the series, foregrounding the predictable nature of the sitcom action and taking it to task. Abed’s love of popular culture slowly becomes the raison d’être of the series, as each episode seems to become one of his renditions of film genres. In so doing, the character points out the artifices of the sitcom genre, while at the same time transforming the mundane into the spectacular, insisting on the elements of fiction that appear in our everyday lives: through Abed, Community both reifies sitcom conventions and links them back to the spectator’s own lives - making it one of the most original series in recent memory.

The Philosophical Breakfast Club: four remarkable friends who transformed science and changed the world

If the flap of a butterfly's wing can be projected to affect the course of a subsequent hurricane, then certainly the life and actions of any human being can be somehow related to all future human events. Faced with the challenge of developing the links between ideas and inventions, the historian must decide on some criteria, however arbitrary, to distinguish between the level of potential influence precedent actions had on antecedent.

Improving nutrition at breakfast and after school clubs

Background: The Government's mandatory standards for‘school food other than lunches’ were introduced in 2007 (School Food Trust) to ensure there are consistent messages about good, nutritious food across the extended school day. All maintained primary, secondary and special schools in England are legally obliged to comply with the standards. With childhood obesity levels increasing, it is essential that all schools are committed to meeting these standards. The aim of this study was to carry out independent audits of all breakfast and after school clubs at Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea primary schools in both 2009 and 2010, aiming to assess whether or not the foods and drinks being served were compliant. Methods: Two separate audit tools were used (one for breakfast and one for after school clubs) to record not only the food and drink items served, but also whether staff were aware of the standards, numbers attending, free school meal entitlement, cost to attend and cooking facilities available. These were developed in-house by the Nutrition and Dietetics Service. Specific food and drinks observed on the day were recorded and notes made about food and drinks available on other days or at other times of the year. The first round of audits were conducted from February to March 2009, before training on the standards was promoted to all clubs and delivered in January and February 2010. The second round of audits took place between May and July 2010. After each audit, schools were sent a clear and concise report of the findings and given explicit information about whether they were meeting the standards. Results: A total of 18/19 (95%) of breakfast clubs and 15/15 (100%) of after school clubs consented to be audited in 2009. In 2010, audits were carried out in 22/22 (100%) breakfast clubs and 17/17 (100%) of after school clubs. The number of breakfast clubs meeting the standards increased from 50% (9/18) to 68% (15/22). For after school clubs, the increase was from 20% (3/15) to 47% (8/17). Furthermore, the average number of areas in which each club was failing dropped from 1.8 to 1.3 for breakfast clubs and from 3.1 to 2.1 for after school clubs. However, these changes were not associated with attendance of the training session. Club performance against the standard was also not correlated with reported staff awareness of the standards. Discussion: Although there has been much improvement in the standard of food served at breakfast and after school clubs in the past year, many more changes could have been made had some schools been more proactive about the suggestions given in their original reports. Attendance at the training session appeared to have no bearing on staff awareness of the standards or club performance. Key problem areas have been highlighted for both breakfast clubs (fruit provision and drinks) and after school clubs (confectionery items, drinks and fruit), which will be useful in guiding further initiatives to improve menus. A study by Waddington et al. (2003) is one of few published works looking at breakfast club nutrition, although it highlights the substantial contribution a nutritionally balanced breakfast can make to a child's overall intake, and thus the importance of further work with schools to tackle this area. Conclusions: Although the training session provided a wealth of information about the standards, including tools for self-auditing, staff have indicated that they required more in-depth support, including information on providing food to fit a tight budget, portion sizes, the types of foods that are permitted, and menu ideas that appeal to children. Providing a nutrition resource with recipes to meet all these requirements may therefore be a good way to ensure that all clubs can meet the standards.

Best UK Breakfast Club wins award

Karaoke, cooking, and student-led 'enterprise' sessions; these are just a few of the activities undertaken by a self-sustaining breakfast club that has won an award for being the most outstanding in England.

NEWS AND VIEWS: Breakfast clubs: availability for British schoolchildren and the nutritional, social and academic benefits

Breakfast clubs are not a new resource for parents and children, but interest in them has heightened, because of both the need for improvement in school food and political interest in their availability across the devolved countries. It has been suggested that concrete scientific evidence as to their benefits to academic performance be required before a breakfast club should be available for children across the UK. It is inappropriate to correlate crude measures such as Standard Assessment Test (SAT) scores and exam results with breakfast club provision, and the focus of analysis should be individual pupil benefit (both scholastically and socially), nutrient intake, meal provision and even assisting working parents with child care. There is limited data available to investigate the adequacy of food provision in school breakfast clubs, but there is now sufficient information available for breakfast club organisers to provide a nutritionally balanced breakfast. A body of evidence is emerging that demonstrates the benefits of breakfast club attendance to mental performance and social development. However, it is unclear whether such benefits are derived from the consumption of breakfast per se, the environment or a combination of the two. It is reasonably safe to conclude that the benefits of breakfast clubs are more pronounced in deprived areas, and efforts of charities to support breakfast clubs should focus in these areas. Given the role and importance of school breakfast clubs, ContinYou, a leading national charity, pledged support in establishing 200 more school breakfast clubs over 2009 and 2010.

News

Grants totaling £28,000 have been awarded to 80 school breakfast clubs across the UK to help them engage further with their children's families.

Research Review: Economic evidence for interventions in children's social care: revisiting the What Works for Children project

ABSTRACTEvidence about the cost‐effectiveness of interventions in children's services can help decision‐makers make more efficient use of scarce resources. We returned to six somewhat disparate interventions on which we had collated research evidence identified by service planners and practitioners as relevant to the well‐being of children in the course of the Economic and Social Research Council‐funded What Works for Children project. These are home visiting, parenting, cognitive–bahavioural therapy, mentoring, traffic calming and breakfast club interventions. We aimed to explore the nature and extent of evidence on cost‐benefit and cost effectiveness for these measures. We conducted searches for studies that looked at the costs as well as the effectiveness of the six interventions and found 24 studies matching our inclusion criteria. The studies were diverse in terms of study design and economic methods (including economic modelling and willingness to pay). Studies relating to parenting programmes and traffic calming gave the most positive indication that the interventions may be cost‐effective for the outcomes in question. The remainder of the studies did not give a clear picture, in large part because of a lack of demonstration that the intervention was effective.

Student Communities and Individualism in American Cinema

Hollywood films partially construct how Americans think about education. Recent work on the representation of schools in American cinema has highlighted the role of class difference in shaping school film genres. It has also advanced the idea that a nuanced understanding of American individualism helps to explain why the different class genres are shaped as they are. This article attempts to refine this theoretical approach by focusing on the paradox of individualism, which suggests that individualism must always be dependent on community. We examine 5 films (Rushmore 1988, The Breakfast Club 1985, Mona Lisa Smile 2003, School of Rock 2003, and Stand and Deliver 1988) and argue that, although the values of individualism are certainly celebrated, these films also show, perhaps unwittingly, that the achievements of individualism require robust student communities. We describe how student communities function in these films, what achievements they make possible, and what obstacles they face.

Postfeminist Cliques?: Class, Postfeminism, and the Molly Ringwald-John Hughes Films

In order to reconsider the ways in which social class is articulated in 1980s postfeminist culture, this article investigates three iconic films starring Molly Ringwald: Sixteen Candles (John Hughes, 1984), The Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985), and Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch, 1986).

News

An increasing number of parents who use breakfast and after-school clubs can no longer afford to pay the bill and are therefore jeopardising children's education, according to a union