Penny Parham is helping students in Miami-Dade County make healthier food choices more easily thanks to highlighted, veggie-promoting "Lean & Green" school lunch food menus. By providing more vegetarian options, officials with the Miami-Dade County Public Schools hope to increase students’ consumption of fruits and vegetables and make healthy food the easy choice. How did they make it happen?
Lean & Green
Penny Parham, the administrative director at Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, realized the school district’s initiative of “Meatless Mondays” were popular for students. However, these vegetarian meal options were only available to students on Mondays. The Miami-Dade school district is the fourth largest in the nation, and having healthy eating ...
Many kids and families have limited spaces to be physically active. What are the best ways to improve access to “active spaces” like gyms, athletic fields, parks, and playgrounds for all families, including Latinos? Many schools do not provide public access to physical activity facilities. Shared use agreements set up rules for public use of schoolyards after class. Repairing sidewalks, installing street lights, and improving parks can stimulate more physical activity. Creating safer streets can people to walk or cycle to schools, parks, and other family destinations. Also, using marketing and technology to change kids’ physical activity patterns. See the Full Research Review with references (PDF)
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Chef Ann Cooper founder of the Chef Ann Foundation (CAF) has created an online resource called The Lunch Box, to help support schools who want to change their school food situation. In a recent interview Emily Miller, from CAF told Food Tank that they want to help create healthier food for kids in today's world, where kids can learn the importance of nourishing their bodies and where their food comes from. Miller explains that the best way to teach kids about healthier foods is through school, where kids are already in a learning environment. The Lunch Box resource is an in-depth school food resource, where school food professionals can use free tools to help move from processed foods to scratch-made plates that are sustainable. Including over 200 recipes that are kid-tested, ...
This is part of our Food and Latino Kids: A Research Review »
Future Research Needs
This review of the evidence indicates that researchers should conduct additional and more rigorously designed studies, such as experimental or quasi-experimental studies with less reliance on self-reported data whenever possible. Future research should examine the degree to which increased access to local healthy foods impacts dietary habits and obesity in communities. Researchers also should: Identify other multilevel factors (for individuals, at homes, in neighborhoods, counties and cities), that contribute to obesity and health outcomes. Such factors include stressors, lack of time or interest in preparing healthy foods, prices for healthy foods that far exceed those for unhealthy ...
This is part of our Food and Latino Kids: A Research Review » Increased access to healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods does not necessarily ensure that it will lead to improvements in residents’ diets.
Some studies some no affect on dietary improvement
Two studies of low-income neighborhoods that have reported findings without sub-analyses have shown that increased access to healthy foods does not affect diet quality in low-income neighborhoods. A national study using longitudinal data observed that proximity to a supermarket was not related to diet quality in low-income young to middle-aged adult populations.27 In addition, the first controlled (one intervention neighborhood and one comparison neighborhood), longitudinal study of a PFFFI-funded project found that exposure ...
This is part of our Food and Latino Kids: A Research Review »
More access to supermarkets results in less obesity risk
Greater neighborhood access to supermarkets catering to low-income populations is linked to a lower prevalence of obesity in adults and children. Evidence from systematic reviews, longitudinal and cross-sectional studies collectively show the relationship between greater access to supermarkets and lower prevalence of obesity. Only two studies have analyzed the relationship between lack of local supermarket access and obesity over a period of time (2 years and 4 years). The data from these studies show mixed evidence in adults and children. One study reported that an increase in accessible supermarkets was associated with decreased BMI for adults who moved from ...
This is part of our Food and Latino Kids: A Research Review »
Access to farmers markets is lacking
In the past decade, the number of farmers’ markets in the United States has more than doubled.51 However, many of these markets had not previously been accessible to certain people, including Latino populations.
Efforts to increase number of farmers markets
A number of food financing initiatives have increased the number of farmers’ markets operating in communities impacted by non-medical drivers of health.52 For example, through the activities of community groups, there are nearly a dozen farmers’ markets in communities impacted by non-medical drivers of health in Oakland, California. Latinos comprise 25 percent of these communities.53 Similarly, the Y USA’s Pioneering ...
This is part of our Food and Latino Kids: A Research Review »
Federal food assistance
Research on the impacts of healthy food financing initiatives among SNAP and WIC participants is important because a large proportion of them are Latino, and/or belong to communities impacted by non-medical drivers of health. Latinos comprise 19 percent of SNAP and 32 percent of WIC participants.36,37 About 50 percent of U.S. Latino children are served by the WIC program.37
Efforts to promote healthier food via federal food assistance
In 2009, the U.S. government revised the “package” of food eligible for WIC food to include a wider variety of healthy foods, including whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and lower-fat milk. Three studies found that the new WIC food package significantly ...
This is part of our Food and Latino Kids: A Research Review »
Efforts rising to boost healthy food in corner stores
Initial findings on the impact of initiatives aimed at expanding healthy foods in corner stores have been generally favorable, although most studies to date are not large and rigorous in their methods and analyses. Additionally, the majority of studies have not been conducted in areas with significant Latino populations. Two reviews of several studies on corner store initiatives in areas with small numbers of Latinos found that most stores reported that the interventions were linked to increased sales of promoted healthy foods, including fruits and vegetables, low-fat milk, high-fiber cereals, and water.71,72 A small, randomized, controlled study of tiendas in ...
