Investing in Public School Kitchens and Equipment as a Pathway to Healthy Eating and Equitable Access to Healthy Food

Abstract

BACKGROUND:We gathered baseline data about student need of healthy, free school food, and if current school meal programming serves students in need of healthy free school food, in anticipation of the completion of a district-wide kitchen infrastructure and educational farm project in a high-poverty urban school district. METHODS:We used mixed methods to assess student hunger, whether the school meal program met student needs, and to determine associations between presence of a cooking kitchen and perceptions of healthy food. Participants included 72 staff, 143 parents, and 6437 K-5 students in the qualitative component, and 9078 parents and 1693 staff in the quantitative component. RESULTS:Staff participants stated packaging and reheating food influenced student consumption. During observations, students at seven of nine high poverty sites with packaged reheated food did not eat school meals, but this was not true at four out of four high-poverty sites with unpackaged fresh food. Parents (OR = 1.17, 95% CI 1.00-1.39) and staff (OR = 1.58, 95% CI 1.15-2.17) from schools with a cooking kitchen were more likely to perceive school lunch as healthy in adjusted models. CONCLUSIONS:Food preparation and presentation appears to influence student consumption of school food and adult perception of school meal quality. Citation: O'Neill M, Mujahid M, Hutson M, Fukutome A, Robichaud R, Lopez J. Investing in public school kitchens and equipment as a pathway to healthy eating and equitable access to healthy food.

Teachers' Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Breakfast in the Classroom: The Importance of Health

“…School districts can work toward these improvements by applying the following: Stakeholders and decision‐makers should communicate about the benefits, with a focus on health, when rolling out a new breakfast program. Those involved in the implementation of BIC should also be informed that the breakfast items meet government nutrition standards. Teachers who are satisfied with the program and have established a successful daily BIC routine can provide “best practice” training sessions for other teachers. Ensuring that each student has access to fresh fruit may improve teacher approval. Parents and staff were more likely to perceive unpackaged, fresh lunches made in cooking kitchens as healthy compared to packaged and reheated lunches 36 . Thus, investing in kitchen equipment that allows the food service staff to cook more meals may improve the teachers' perceptions toward the breakfast items' healthfulness and variety. Policy and funding focused on school food service programs and infrastructure could provide the resources that would allow school meals to shift from frozen and packaged to freshly cooked. …”

A kitchen at the heart of a school – an investigation into school meals in the Republic of Ireland

“…A wider study would be needed to prove generalisability of the findings. However, research in the field lends support to the case study findings (National Nutrition Council of Finland 2017; Morgan and Sonnino 2007;Persson Osowski, Göranzon, and Fjellström 2012;O'Neill et al 2020;Irish Heart Foundation 2015).…”

“…Serving school meals in packaging may deter students from eating it due to the texture of the meal but also due to other children's perceptions of the meal (O'Neill et al 2020). The same study concluded that scratch-cooked meals had less stigma and were better perceived by both students and their parents which lead to increased consumption.…”

“…The nature of the funding, which does not allow any monies to be spent on staff or equipment compounds this model. Scratch-cooking may initially be a costlier option, but benefits can offset this; pedagogical opportunities (Earl and Lalli 2020;Andersen, Baarts, and Holm 2017), increased consumption (O'Neill et al 2020), reduction of ultra-processed foods, a better chance for socialisation over the meal (Caraher and Lang 1999) and local employment. The D8 school canteen initiative demonstrates that in this instance, with student involvement and a supportive staff, an embedded scratch-cooking kitchen at the heart of the school was used as a scaffold to make the school a more food literate entity.…”

The Negative Impact of Night Shifts on Diet in Emergency Healthcare Workers

“…It is rarely fresh but often packaged reheated food with a bad presentation. However, food preparation and presentation appears to influence student consumption of school food and adult perception of school meal quality [25]. Given that emergency HCWs work under the time pressure of urgent care, they must both take care of patients and themselves i.e., finding the time to eat and drink.…”