A Randomized School Trial of Environmental Strategies to Encourage Fruit and Vegetable Consumption among Children

Abstract

The Cafeteria Power Plus project examined whether a cafeteria-based intervention would increase the fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption of children. Twenty-six schools were randomly assigned to either an intervention or control condition. Baseline lunch observations of a sample (N = 1668) of first- and third-grade students occurred in the spring of 2000; follow-up was in the spring of 2002. The intervention took place during two consecutive school years beginning in the fall of 2000 and consisted of daily activities (increasing the availability, attractiveness, and encouragement for FV) and special events (kick-offs, samplings, challenge weeks, theater production, and finale meal). Training of food-service staff and cook managers was ongoing throughout the intervention phase. Students in the intervention schools significantly increased their total fruit intake. Process measures indicated that verbal encouragement by food-service staff was associated with outcomes. The outcomes suggest that multicomponent interventions are more powerful than cafeteria programs alone with this age group.

Fruit and vegetable availability: a micro environmental mediating variable?

“…Although the small increase in F&V servings and the relatively small number of schools in the study (the school was the unit of analysis) prevented a mediation analysis, it seems likely that the change in availability mediated the effect of this intervention. A similar finding was reported in 45 Evaluation of a school-based intervention to increase F&V consumption of elementary-school children via increased availability, events and challenges 0.14 serving per day difference in F&V consumption between intervention and control schools at the end of the study and availability was associated with consumption at baseline and post-test (no mediation effects) 33 Baseline and 18-month follow-up of 816 11-year-old Norwegian children and associations with combined availability and accessibility measure Availability predicted intake at both time points. Changes in availability correlated with changes in intake Bere et al (2006) 46 Evaluation of policy-level intervention that included classroom activities, parental information and participation in Norwegian School Fruit Programme…”

Personal, social and environmental predictors of daily fruit and vegetable intake in 11-year-old children in nine European countries

“…For children, especially, availability of foods has received attention (Cullen et al, 2003;Perry et al, 2004). In the present study, only home availability appeared to be a significant correlate of daily vegetable consumption but not of daily fruit intake.…”

Fatores de risco cardiovascular e fatores associados em escolares do Município de Belém, Pará, Brasil

“…Vale destacar que, embora a oferta de salgadinhos, biscoitos (snacks) e sanduíches à base de fritura e o baixo consumo de frutas e legumes 19 * Elevado > 100mg/dL para crianças e > 130mg/dL para adolescentes; ** Atividade física < 150 minutos/semana.…”