FamilySocialSupport
EA—early age
Linear regression model for anthropometry.
Model | Unstandardized Coefficients | Standardized Coefficients | t | Significance | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
B | SE | Beta | |||
(Constant) Power AvailFood YearOrMore log10SampleSize | 4.140 | 1.008 | 4.109 | 0.001 | |
1.511 | 0.468 | 0.859 | 3.231 | 0.007 | |
3.432 | 0.804 | 0.976 | 4.267 | 0.001 | |
0.870 | 0.403 | 0.384 | 2.161 | 0.050 | |
−2.437 | 0.503 | −1.267 | −4.846 | 0.000 |
With regards to the explanatory power of the model, R 2 = 0.789, R 2 adj. = 0.719, and significance = 0.009.
The linear regression model describing what influences the anthropometry is provided in Table 6 .
With regards to the explanatory power of the model, R 2 = 0.683, R 2 adj. = 0.586, and significance = 0.003.
The linear regression model describing what influences the behaviour is provided in Table 7 .
Linear regression model for behaviour.
Model | Unstandardized Coefficients | Standardized Coefficients | t | Significance | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
B | SE | Beta | |||||
(Constant) FamilySocialSupport | 2.321 | 0.229 | 10.131 | 0.000 | |||
1.054 | 0.486 | 0.348 | 2.168 | 0.037 |
With regards to the explanatory power of the model, R 2 = 0.121, R 2 adj. = 0.096, and significance = 0.037.
An alternative linear regression model describing what influences the behaviour is provided in Table 8 .
Alternative linear regression model for behaviour.
Model | Unstandardized Coefficients | Standardized Coefficients | t | Significance | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
B | SE | Beta | |||
(Constant) Neurope | 3.227 | 0.205 | 15.761 | 0.000 | |
−1.727 | 0.328 | −0.670 | −5.260 | 0.000 |
With regards to the explanatory power of the model, R 2 = 0.449, R 2 adj. = 0.432, and significance < 0.001.
Looking across the whole study sample, it can be seen that in general the interventions created an impact in one or more ways either on knowledge, intentions, eating habits and/or anthropometry. In other words, it was hard to find studies that created no impact. This finding adds to the body of evidence that suggests that food-based interventions are a well-suited and effective policy tool when it comes to promoting healthier eating among young people.
Out of all the included studies, nine studies focused on family support as an intervention component. But out of those, our analysis showed that the family involvement was impactful among participants when it comes to promoting healthier food choices. Parents being influencers and role models in the family in these studies seemed to help to influence children’s dietary habits. Studies which involved participants’ parents in the intervention and provided them with nutritional knowledge and healthy cooking skills (i.e., knowledge about the importance of healthy food and nutrition during the early age of their children), seemed to be able to help young people prepare more healthy and nutritious food at home. As studies showed, this seemed to increase children’s intentions towards eating more fruits and vegetables and eventually resulted in consumption of more healthy foods. However, this did not seem to be the case for all ages. Intention to eat more fruits and vegetables was seen among early age participants (EA) either alone or with family support. It should be noted that the regression models did not include interactions, since the number of analysed studies was only ~40. It was not possible to include age as a continuous variable in the models because (as it can be seen in Table 5 ) age was a range, and sometimes even a wide range, e.g., 8–11 or 4–11. Family support increases the outcome measure by approximately 1 in both cases. Please refer to Table 5 and Table 7 for detailed linear regression model used for attitude and behaviour.
The results from the models which was created to measure the efficiency of HE/FV highlighted the fact that HE/FV scale depends only on region where the intervention was done. The behaviour outcome for Northern Europe was on average 1.5 while the average for the rest was 3.2 (please refer to Table 8 ).
The results suggested that the design of the study plays a role when it comes to be able to show impact of interventions. From the findings, it was clear that the anthropometry measured among the participants were increasing with the power of the study. That is, the stronger the design the greater the likelihood of being able to measure impact on anthropometric outcomes—a unit increase in the design power is associated with an outcome increase of approximately 1.5 (please refer to Table 6 ). To examine the influence of study design we used the score that was constructed for the purpose (please refer to Table 1 ). This score assigns a higher power to randomized designs than non-randomized ones.
It was also clear that the intervention duration does have impact on the outcome, i.e., the longer the duration better the anthropometric results among the children. Interventions that lasted a year or more, had the outcome measure on average almost one unit higher than shorter studies (please refer to Table 6 ).
Results showed that anthropometric outcome decreased within the sample size. Increasing the sample size by a factor of 10, from approximately 100 to 1000, decreased the outcome measure by almost 2.5 (please refer to Table 6 ). Thus, bigger the sample size a reverse effect on outcome was obtained. The studies whose intervention was done for long period of time (i.e., couple of months or year and among small participants) were found to be effective in the outcome. It might be the case that it was hard to administer the same thing to large sample size post intervention and thus could have decreased the anthropometry outcome among the participants.
Our analyses showed that a food focus, specifically healthy meal availability had an impact on the children’s anthropometric outcomes—increasing it by almost 3.5 on average (please refer to Table 6 ).
Results showed that the younger the study subjects were, the more influence interventions had on attitudes (the outcome was on average 0.75 higher than for other age groups). Thus, the result suggests that the participants’ attitude increases when they are in their early age (EA) i.e., 4–7 years old. Furthermore, results suggest that increased family support associated with participants’ attitude towards healthy eating helps in changing the behaviour among them. Early age (EA) and family support seemed to impact positively both alone and together. Meaning that the intervention had positive impacts on participants (i.e., EA participants) attitudes towards healthy eating either with the involvement of their family support or without the involvement of family support. Please refer to Table 5 for detail linear regression model for attitude.
Findings showed that nutritional knowledge among participants (i.e., of all age group) does not depend on school-based interventions. Thus, none of the collected variables have influences on nutritional knowledge.
4.1. discussion of results of this review in relation to others.
In the discussion we aim to relate our findings with what has been found in previous studies, discuss our methodological approach and reflect on what are the policy implications. Since the discussion on how to counteract the unhealthy eating pattern and the worrying increase in nutrition related disorders among young people is attracting much attention and since the discussion on how the school could contribute we aim to give policy makers and practitioners an up to date insight into the potentials of the school to act as a hub for promotion of healthier eating and provide inspiration for the development of new types of school-based interventions and strategies.
The huge interest in using the infrastructure of the school to initiate and promote healthier eating among young people has resulted in a large number of interventions studies over the past decades. This research interest per definition as the same time creates a need for syntheses of the findings in order to make them feed into the public health and school policy cycle and to “send the results to work”. Taken the huge investment that better food at school strategies at school will cost for states it is worth appreciating that the Evidence-Informs-Policy pathway seems to be working. At the same time the conceptual approaches and the understanding of what intervention components might work better than others, which age groups might benefit the most etc. as developed considerably which again adds to the rationale for synthesis of intervention study findings. Most recent reviews by Julie et al. [ 76 ], Noguera el al. [ 77 ], Evans et al. [ 78 ], Cauwenberghe et al. [ 34 ] and Brown et al. [ 79 ] has created a time gap of almost five years. Covering the last five years of research our review makes a needed contribution and in addition we argue it makes a needed contribution to a standardization and conceptualization of both sampling and intervention design methodologies.
Overall, the findings from this review suggest that school-based interventions that include intervention components such as information and teaching, food focus and family support are effective in improving the HE/FV, anthropometric measurements and attitude towards healthy dietary behaviour among the participants. On the other hand, nutritional knowledge among participants did not seem to be influenced much by any of the intervention components used.
Impacts on HE/FV behaviours were observed, but mostly among early age children revealing a distinct age pattern in the findings. Thus, age was seen as a significant factor in determining effectiveness in several study [ 35 , 37 , 39 , 42 ]. Impact was greater on young children in the 4–7 year old age range, suggesting that dietary influences may vary with age.
Multicomponent approaches that includes good quality instruction and programs, a supportive social environment both at school and home, family support has been effective in addressing childhood related diseases through focusing on diet and physical activity. Most of the studies in this review implemented with combination of school staff and intervention specialists provide evidence for the effectiveness of the program. Thus, evidence supports that family involvement and nutrition education curriculum delivered by the teacher under supervision of intervention specialists can alter the intake of fruit and vegetables while impacting positively on anthropometric measurements. Teacher led interventions have been effective and can be the most sustainable approach for long term impact of the program. The same conclusion was found in a review done in investigating the effectiveness of school-based interventions in Europe which provided the effectiveness of multicomponent intervention promoting a healthy diet in school aged children in Europe [ 34 ].Studies with a food focus in their intervention approaches showed significant improvements in BMI [ 35 , 54 , 58 ]. Significant improvements in BMI here refers to the studies whose probability value was less or equal to 0.05. This means that the interventions in that case showed reduction in body mass of participants. We looked at studies whose aim was to focus on interventions of obesity prevention or reduction among primary school children’s. Thus, search term such as: “obesity prevention intervention among primary schools”, was used as explained in the methods section. When performing the search for school-based interventions we did not encounter any studies that were focusing on underweight. Making the options for healthy choices of food in the school cafeterias and having the option of free food from the school gardens decreases the sugar sweetened beverages and junk options among the children’s and thus resulting in improvements in BMI. This review evidence further highlights that duration of the intervention, i.e., a year or more has an impact on anthropometric measurements. This is in contrast to reviews of Julie et al. [ 76 ] and Cauwenberghe et al. [ 34 ] review that found that making the better options of food choices and duration of the studies were effective in reducing the sedentary behaviour and noting improvements in BMI. This study also found that larger sample sizes reverse the outcome of anthropometric measurements (i.e., sample size negatively influences the outcome). This might be the case because it might be harder to administer the same thing to more individual. Thus, more studies are needed to examine the effects of bigger sample sizes.
Our study is far from being the first to create overview of the large number of studies that are studying interventions that can promote healthier eating habits and that can counteract the worrying increase in obesity and overweight among young people the general. The huge interest is reflected in the number of studies trying to assess the impact and effectiveness of school-based interventions as well as in the number of reviews aiming to synthesize the findings from the growing body of evidence of the effect of school-based food interventions into actionable school food policies. Our study adds to this body of knowledge and fills a gap since our study looks at the most recent studies.
Comparing our review with others we find that the majority of the studies on school food-based interventions have been conducted in high income countries. This is also the case in our study and this fact is important to keep in mind since it introduces a bias in the insight created from school food effectiveness reviews. It is also important to keep in mind that studies—and as a result also reviews-covers different types of school food cultures. These cultures can roughly be divided in collective, semi collective and non-collective types. In the collective type found in countries such as Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Brazil school food provision is an integrated—and mainly free—part of the school day. In semi-collective approaches food is in most cases traditionally a part of what is offered at school, but due to payment. In the non-collective approach found in countries such as Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands there is little infrastructure and tradition for school organized foodservice. In this approach parents organized lunch boxes as well as competitive foods traditionally play a bigger role.
A further important note to make is the distinction between narrow F & V approaches and broader healthier eating intervention approaches. This classification can also be seen in previous studies and in more recent reviews. The first type of interventions that follow the six-a-day tradition that to some extent has been fuelled by the European School Fruit program introduced by the EU in 2009 was reviewed by Noguera et al. [ 77 ] and by Evans et al. [ 78 ]. In a study by Noguera el al. [ 77 ] a meta-analysis on F&V interventions was done but limited to educational interventions in the sense that it only looked at computer-based interventions and covering mostly European research. The study showed that this targeted but narrowed approach was effective in increasing FV consumption but that broader multicomponent types of interventions including free/subsidized FV interventions were not effective. In the review paper from 2012 by Evans et al. [ 78 ] examined studies done in United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway and the Netherlands. Evans and co-workers [ 78 ] found that school-based interventions were able to moderately improve fruit intake but that they had only minimal impact on vegetable intake. These reviews and previous ones generally conclude that F&V targeted interventions are able to improve young people’s eating patterns towards higher intake of fruit.
In the category of reviews taking a broader approach to healthier lifestyle promotion we find studies and reviews that looks at promotion of healthier eating in general—and that in some cases include physical activity. A review by Julie et al. [ 76 ] covered studies from United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Spain and the Netherlands. This review also included physical activity as part of broader school-based obesity prevention interventions. In particular, interventions should focus on extending physical education classes, incorporating activity breaks, and reducing sedentary behaviours to improve anthropometric measures. Julie et al. concluded that interventions taking a broader approach should include employing a combination of school staff and intervention specialists to implement programs; that they should include psychosocial/psychoeducational components; involve peer leaders; use incentives to increase fruit and vegetable consumption and should involve family. In a study by Cauwenberghe et al. [ 34 ] intervention studies done in a European union studies were reviewed. This review—as our study do—made an age distinction in the sense that a categorization was done between children and adolescents. Among children the authors found a strong evidence of effect for multicomponent interventions on fruit and vegetable intake. For educational type of interventions Cauwenberghe et al. [ 34 ] found limited evidence of effect as found when looking at behaviour and fruit and vegetable intakes. The study found limited evidence on effectiveness of interventions that specifically targeted children from lower socio-economic status groups. For adolescents Cauwenberghe et al. [ 34 ] found moderate evidence of effect was found for educational interventions on behaviour and limited evidence of effect for multicomponent programmes on behaviour. In the same way as our review authors distinguished between behaviour and anthropometrics and found that effects on anthropometrics were often not measured in their sample. Therefore, evidence was lacking and resulted in inconclusive evidence. Cauwenberghe et al. [ 34 ] concluded that there was evidence was found for the effectiveness of especially multicomponent interventions promoting a healthy diet but that evidence for effectiveness on anthropometrical obesity-related measures was lacking. In a review by Brown et al. [ 79 ] studies mostly from Europe but also covering United States, New Zealand, Canada and Chile it was found that intervention components most likely to influence BMI positively included increased physical activity, decreased sugar sweetened beverages intake, and increased fruit intake.
Our review adds to the increasing support for the idea that school should play a role in promoting healthier eating habits among young people. As such the school can be seen as an important actor when it comes to the promotion of human rights. In particular; the right to adequate food, the right to the highest attainable standard of health and right to the education, school plays an integral part which has also been highlighted in the “United Nations System Standing Committee on Nutrition” new statement for school-based and nutrition interventions [ 25 ]. Furthermore, Mikkelsen and colleagues [ 80 ] in their study have also suggested the fact that the international framework of human rights should invoke its strategies, policies, and regulations in the context of school and that national, regional, and local level actors has important roles to play. Additionally, they have highlighted that ensuring healthy eating in school environment can be a good investment in children short- and long-term health and education achievements. Thus, schools, as a system have the potential to make lasting improvements in students nutrition both in terms of quality and quantity and simultaneously contribute to realization of human rights around the globe [ 25 ].
Strengths and limitations.
All attempts to reduce complexity of research studies in a research field suffers from in built weaknesses. Standardising the work of others in attempts to make generalizations is always difficult. As per definition a review includes attempts to standardize its study material in order to create an overview of “what works” and what “this that works” depends on. For obvious reasons research protocols depends very much on the context of the study: What is doable in one study setting on one country might not work on other settings. Additionally, reporting procedures vary among authors. The aim of a review is to standardize this heterogeneity to something that is homogenous and computable. So, in our case our constructs represent an attempt to make different studies with similar but slightly different approaches and methodologies comparable by making them computable. This has obviously some disadvantages.
Another limitation is that our review restricted itself to cover only published English language articles. Therefore, publication bias cannot be excluded, as it is possible that the inclusion of unpublished articles written in other languages than English will have affected the results of this review. Second, most of the studies included in the present were carried out in countries from Southern and Northern parts of Europe. This raises questions about the generalisability of these results to other countries in Europe, especially because contextual variables were often lacking in the included studies. And the same questions about the generalisability could be raise in other parts of the world i.e., in Latin America, North America, Asia and Africa, as very few studies were reported from this part of the world.
On the other hand, large dropouts were reported in many listed studies and the study follow up were reported in few studies and was for short time period. Among these studies which did follow up, was right after the end of the intervention period and thus this could have affected the effectiveness among this study outcomes. Long-term follows-up post-interventions would help to study the retention of behaviour change and effect on the body composition among the participants. Thus, long terms studies post interventions are needed to draw the conclusion about the sustainability of an intervention. Additionally, in future studies to improve the quality of the evidence of effectiveness in this kind of interventions, studies with high quality, rigorous design, appropriate sample size, post interventions long term follow up, assessment of implementation issues and cost effectiveness of the intervention should be executed.
On the strength side the standardisation approach helps to find patterns and to create overview of a large material within a given field of research. The strength of this study is that it provides a broad up to date overview of what is known about the relationship between school-based intervention and policies and healthy eating outcomes among children and that it contributes to the deeper understanding of the fact that current research findings are quite limited. This is among the very few recent reviews which evaluated the effect of school-based food at nutrition interventions among children only. A systematic review approach of this study attempted efficiently to integrate existing information and provide data for researchers’ rationale in the decision making of future research. Furthermore, the applied explicit methods used in this limited bias and, contributed to improved reliability and accuracy of drawn conclusions. Other advantages are that this study looks specifically at the evidence available in Northern and Southern Europe. Statistical analyses of pooled data have facilitated a more through synthesis of the result is one of the biggest strengths of this study.
The evidence of the impact of school intervention derived from our review suggests several topics to be dealt with in future research not only in Europe but also the other part of the world. First, this review highlights the need for researchers to recognize the importance of further investigations on the measures of anthropometrics, nutritional knowledge, and attitude. Among these 42 studies carried out in different regions very few looked upon the effects on participants’ attitudes and anthropometrics measures. And of those showed positive impact if family support was provided, if started at early age and lastly if food focus was part of the intervention. Additionally, most of the included studies were not aiming to contribute to obesity prevention. Thus, it is highly recommendable that there is urgent need for more studies to be done that includes more measures of efficiency of participants’ attitude towards the healthy behaviour and healthy lifestyle and measures for anthropometrics. Second, to increase the comparability between studies and to facilitate the assessment of effectiveness, more agreement is needed for best measures of the diet and questionnaires. Third, more research is needed to be done among specific groups like low socio-economic group, immigrants or minorities. As mention earlier, only few listed studies included this specific group in their studies. Furthermore, evidence suggest that health inequalities such as prevalence of overweight are as a result of dietary habits and ethnicity and socio-economic status are identified as determinants of health eating. Thus, future research should not exclude these specific groups as European countries have become ethnically diverse.
To improve or decrease childhood diseases such as overweight and obesity and other aspects of health, many policy documents have been calling for the development of the effective strategies among children’s and adolescents. Even though the limited to moderate impact and evidence was found among these school-based interventions, it should be noted that interventions were not primarily targeting obesity prevention but, in many cases, had a broader scope. Thus, in order to deliver these evidence-based recommendations to policy makers factors such as sustainability of intervention, context and cost effectiveness should be considered. Additionally, the policy makers should ensure school policies and the environment that encourage physical activity and a healthy diet.
Findings from this systematised review suggest that applying multicomponent interventions (environmental, educational, and physical strategies) along with parental involvement and of long-term initiatives may be promising for improving dietary habits and other childhood related diseases among primary school children. Despite being challenging to find experimental studies done in related fields, those studies found showed positive trend. Thus, to conclude, evidence of the effect was found among school-based food and nutrition initiatives among primary school children. However, to strengthen the perspectives of this study, further systematic review targeting the more long-term studies assessing the long-term sustainability of the interventions should be considered. Also, studies with goal to increase efficiency of anthropometric measurements in their future school-based interventions could include increasing PA, increasing fruit and vegetable intake and decreasing sedentary behaviour. This study has provided fundamentals background on which further research could be done in this area of school-based food and nutrition interventions. Thus, the findings from this systematic review can be used as guidelines for future interventions in school settings related to food and nutrition. Also, the categorization of intervention components we see as useful for the planning of future interventions.
Conceptualization, B.E.M. and A.C.; methodology, B.E.M., A.C. and F.S.; validation B.E.M.; formal analysis, F.S.; investigation, A.C.; resources B.E.M. and A.C.; data curation, A.C. and F.S.; writing—original draft preparation, B.E.M., A.C. and F.S.; writing—review and editing, B.E.M., A.C. and F.S.; project administration, B.E.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
This research received no external funding.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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