Challenges Associated with Improving the Nutritional Quality of Foods
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The University of San Francisco USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center Master's Theses Theses, Dissertations, Capstones and Projects Winter 12-16-2016 CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH IMPROVING THE NUTRITIONAL QUALITY OF FOODS AVAILABLE IN SCHOOLS: THE CASE OF SAN FRANCISCO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT Marianne Hoeidal [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.usfca.edu/thes Recommended Citation Hoeidal, Marianne, "CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH IMPROVING THE NUTRITIONAL QUALITY OF FOODS AVAILABLE IN SCHOOLS: THE CASE OF SAN FRANCISCO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT" (2016). Master's Theses. 199. https://repository.usfca.edu/thes/199 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, Capstones and Projects at USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CHALLENGES ASSOCIATED WITH IMPROVING THE NUTRITIONAL QUALITY OF FOODS AVAILABLE IN SCHOOLS: THE CASE OF SAN FRANCISCO UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS in INTERNATIONAL STUDIES by Marianne Høidal November 23, 2016 UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO Under the guidance and approval of the committee, and approval by all the members, this thesis project has been accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree. APPROVED: _________________________________ _________________ Advisor Date _________________________________ _________________ Academic Director Date _________________________________ _________________ Dean of Arts and Sciences Date Table of Content 1 Abstract 2 List of Acronyms 3 Introduction 3.1 Nutrition Transition 3.2 Government Interventions and Transnational Food Companies 3.3 History of School Meal Programs 3.4 United State of America 3.5 Nutrition in the California and San Francisco schools 3.6 This Thesis 4 Literature Review 4.1 The Development of United States National School Lunch Program 4.1.1 Private Sector and Junk Food 4.1.2 Community Involvement 4.1.3 Wellness Policy 4.1.4 Healthy, Hungry-Free Kids Act 4.1.5 Vending Machines and Smart Snacks 4.1.6 Private Sector 4.2 Literature 4.2.1 Barriers to Healthy Eating and Free and Reduced-Priced Meals 4.2.2 Let’s Go! 4.2.3 Challenges in California Høidal 2 4.2.4 Food in Schools 4.3 Lack of Literature 5 Methodology 5.1 Data Collection 5.2 Broader Impact and Limitations 6 Discussion 6.1 San Francisco Unified School District 6.1.1 SFUSD’s Policies, Achievements, and Food Provider 6.1.2 Parental Influence 6.1.3 Wellness Policy 6.1.4 Revolution Foods 6.1.5 IDEO 6.1.6 Updated Wellness Policy 6.2 Main Challenges and How They Have Been Overcome 6.2.1 Lunchrooms - From Junk Food to Revenue 6.2.2 How to Make them Eat More? 6.2.3 Was the IDOE project the right way to go? 6.2.4 Lunch Stigma 6.2.5 Founding 7 Conclusion 8 Bibliography Høidal 3 1 Abstract This thesis examines school meal programs as a governmental intervention to improve food security among children. Further, it will examine how the global nutrition transition is affecting school meal programs and what challenges schools have met in their attempts to improve the nutritional components in meals served in schools. This thesis uses the case of San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) located in California, United States of America, as an opportunity to investigate the key challenges in the process of improving the nutritional components of their meal plans, and how they overcame this challenges. The thesis begins with a historical perspective on the nutrition transition and how the phenomenon has developed and affected the human population in general. Then, the thesis will start focusing on school meal programs worldwide, and in SFUSD in California in particular. The thesis draws principally from a close review of SFUSD documents and interview of key actors both from the school district, the school board and other related agencies familiar with the school meal program. I first give an overview of the changes made by SFUSD to improve the nutritional components of foods available in schools from 1999 until today. Then the thesis discusses what challenges the school district has faced throughout the process of improving the nutritional components of foods available in schools, and how the challenges has been overcome. The challenges include funding, making healthy foods that school children would like to eat, and overcome stigma related to consuming school lunch. I conclude with a discussion of the lessons learned from this case and how they may be applicable to other school districts. Høidal 4 2 List of Acronyms BMI Body Mass Index HHFKA Healthy, Hungry-Free Kids Act NSLP National School Lunch Program SBP School Breakfast Program SFUSD San Francisco Unified School District SNS Student Nutrition Department UN United Nations USDA United States Department of Agriculture WFP World Food Program WHO World Health Organization Høidal 5 3 Introduction Overweight and obesity are featured by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the worlds most neglected public health problems (WHO, n.d.). Numbers from WHO shows that the worldwide obesity rate has doubled since 1980, and that the majority of the world’s population live in countries where obesity and overweight are killing more people than underweight and starvation (WHO, 2016). The economic growth the world has experienced during the past decades has significantly influenced the rise of overweight and obesity as health issues, especially in the western parts of the world. Jobs have gone from mainly consisting of manual labor to become primarily office related, which has led to an overall reduction in the adult physical activity pattern. Among children the physical activity level has decreased and kids are increasingly being identified as at- risk when it comes to living a sedentary lifestyle (McDermott, 2007). With a growing economy, peoples’ food consummation patter has also changed. Home cooked meals have been replaced with processed and packaged food from fast food restaurants, which tend to be low in both vegetables and fruit (Harper, 2006), and high in energy and sodium. Processed and packaged food is food changed from its original appearance that tend to be energy dense with a high level of fat, sodium, and/or added sugar. The same shift can be found in school lunchrooms, where the school increasingly draws from food distributors who provide processed and packaged foods for students’ lunches. Diseases such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and abnormal cholesterol are all food related disease that all are known to be a consequence of poor eating habits related to the consumption of these foods (WHO, 2016). A decreasing activity pattern in combination with a higher consumption of energy dense food, have been recognized as the primary risk factor of obesity (O'Dea & Piers, 2002). Høidal 6 Processed and packaged food is today found on a worldwide basis due to the globalization. Corinna Hawkes, a Professor at City University of London and Director of the Center for Food Policy, states in her book, Globalization and the Nutrition Transition, that the “nutrition transition is deeply rooted in the process of globalization” (Hawkes, 2007, p. 1). Further, she writes that globalization has changed many aspects of the food supply chain and has led to a greater availability of food on a worldwide basis because of transnational actors and trade. The quantity of food available has become greater due to increased production, which has affected both the cost of food and trade agreements between nation states. Key factors driving the nutrition transition are the liberalization of international food trade and foreign direct investment, global food advertisement and promotion, emergence of global agribusiness and transnational food companies, and retail restructuring (Hawkes, 2007). 3.1 Nutrition Transition All the above-mentioned factors have led to the success of different transnational corporations, providing foods to grocery stores and/or restaurants worldwide. Some of the corporations have specialized in food advertisements targeting children and have found schools to be a great marketing place. The goal of marketing aimed at children is to create brand awareness and loyalty in an early age (Story & French, 2004). Foods advertised to children are often high in sugar, salt and fat, and tend to fall into the category of processed and packaged foods. These products are relatively new to the human being and has increasingly been introduced to the human diet since the start of the industrial revolution. According to Barry M. Popkin, a food science researcher and a Professor in Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health nutritional, processed and Høidal 7 packaged foods are a part of the nutrition transition. Popkin defines the nutrition transition as a shift in the dietary pattern from a limited number of high-carbohydrate staples to a more diverse diet that becomes available to a greater number of people (Popkin B. M., 2002). In the book The Nutrition Transition: Diet and Diseases in the Developing World, Popkin writes that nutrition transition has five stages. The first is the age of collecting food, which was the period when humans obtained food by either hunt or gather what they consumed (Popkin B., 2002). Stage two, according to Popkin, is the age of famine. This era began when humans started to produce food, also known as agriculture. Stage three, the age of receding famine, occurred during the second agricultural revolution, which is dated back to 18th and 19th centuries when modern technology was applied to the agriculture (Popkin B. M., 2002). Stage four, according to Popkin, is the age of degenerative diseases.