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Dairy Council Digest Archives
Creating a Healthy School Environment for Children
Introduction
Healthy lifestyles during childhood support optimal health, growth, maturation, and academic achievement, as well as reduce risk factors for diseases during childhood and later in life (1,2). Also, establishing good eating and physical activity habits early in life may carry over into adulthood. Awareness of the growing epidemic of childhood obesity, children's low calcium intakes, their generally suboptimal diets, and physical inactivity, has heightened the need for effective interventions (1-4).
Schools are in a unique position to improve children's lifestyles (1-4). By providing nutrition education in the classroom and healthful foods throughout the school environment, as well as encouraging regular physical activity, schools can positively impact children's health. Participating in federally sponsored school meal programs such as the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program (SBP) provides students with nutritional and academic benefits (5,6). However, many children do not participate in these programs (1,5). Further, the availability of competitive foods and beverages in venues outside of the school nutrition programs (e.g., a la carte sales, vending machines, snack bars, concession stands) can jeopardize children's nutrient intake and health, as well as undermine nutrition education (1,7). Efforts are therefore being made to help ensure that the entire school environment reinforces healthy eating and physical activity behaviors (3,7).
A healthy school environment provides children with consistent messages reinforcing healthy eating and physical activity habits and with opportunities to practice healthy lifestyle behaviors.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in its Healthy People 2010 , a set of national health goals, recognizes that students' food choices are influenced by the total eating environment created by schools (3). One of the goals of Healthy People 2010 is to increase the proportion of children and adolescents "whose intake from meals and snacks at school contributes proportionally to good overall dietary quality" (3). Specific goals also relate to increasing students' physical activity in schools (3).
This Digest reviews children's nutrition and physical activity; discusses the nutritional and academic benefits of federally sponsored school meal programs; identifies challenges related to achieving an overall school environment supportive of children's health; and provides some examples of efforts to ensure that all foods and beverages sold or served throughout the school environment meet nutrition standards and that physical activity is encouraged.
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