The fact that children spend many hours at school each day, including lunchtime, causes the school environment to be an important out of home setting where children consume at least one main meal a day. With 14% of young people in The Netherlands being overweight, the prevalence of overweight continues to grow, and many teenagers have an unhealthy food pattern containing too much saturated fats, sugars, and a lack of dietary fibre. Also, it will be a challenge to motivate all schools to enroll in the programme in order to achieve the goal of the Dutch Government of all Dutch school cafeterias being healthy by 2015. It is concluded that the Healthy School Canteen programme is a promising intervention to change the school food environment but that further research is needed to ultimately establish its effectiveness. Next, further important results of the study are highlighted and relations with other projects, caveats, and practical recommendations are discussed. Results show that directors and students of participating schools perceive their cafeteria's offering to be healthier after implementing the programme than prior to implementation. A descriptive study was conducted by an independent research agency to survey the perceptions, experiences, and opinions of users of the programme (school directors, parents, students, and health professionals).
The Healthy School Canteen programme of The Netherlands Nutrition Centre is an intervention that helps schools to make their cafeteria's offering healthier. In order to facilitate students to make more healthy food choices and to develop healthy eating habits, it is important that the school food environment is healthy. The environment can exert a strong influence on people's food decisions.
0 kommentar(er)
