HEALTH POLICY INTERVENTION IN SCHOOLS PROMOTE PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES AMONG THE PUPILS

Today, more and more children are overweight or obese than ever before. Schools can play a prominent role in easing the situation. Schools have a great potential through the curriculum, health promoting programming and transportation to preventing children from becoming obese and overweight. However schools are complex social systems that does not necessarily by themselves adapt to this new health promoting role and thus committed management support is needed. Since schools are complex organizational structures convenient organizational structure are needed to formalize the praxis that stakeholders at schools should perform. Policies has become the preferred organizational instrument that management can use to frame the health promoting intentions. However since schools are expected to perform more and more educational obligations, policies seem to emerge in many sub domains of the schools setting. For instance schools are expected to have food and nutrition policy (FNP), physical activity policy (PAP) and a health policy. However instead of seeing these policies as separate entities this paper speculate that there is a possible interrelatedness between the policies. In other words could it be that it is not so much the specific content of the policy as it is the policy process or the awareness raising related do it that produce healthier behaviour

Does organic school food service provide more healthy eating environments than their non organic counterparts?

Organic food strategies are increasingly developing within European school food services at the same time as these services are being involved in measures aiming at promoting healthy eating at school and counteracting obesity. Schools have an important role to play in teaching children fundamental life skills, including good food habits according to a number of authoritative policy papers from Council of Europe, the WHO and the EU platform. Although there are great national differences, European school food culture seems to be in a transitional state in which both healthy eating as well as sustainable consumption strategies are contributing to shaping the future school food culture. It is therefore imperative to study how these changes in agendas influences each other and to study the associations between healthy eating and organic supply strategies at school. This has been the point of departure for Working Package 5 (WP5): Nutrition and Health. The WP5 study has included Denmark, Norway, Germany, Finland and Italy. The WP has been asking questions about the possible spin offs and ramification on nutrition and health that the emerging public organic food strategies might have had. The WP is a part of the project “innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth” (iPOPY) and the WP5 has been carried out by Aalborg University Denmark. The research presented here has been conducted in Germany, Finland, and Italy

Organic and healthy – two goals in one go. A comparative analysis study among public primary schools in Denmark and Germany.

There is a growing health concern over obese and overweight children. Schools are a well suited setting for children for learning and adopting sound life skills. Using schools in healthy eating strategies may play an important role in preventing children from becoming obese and overweight. As a result a growing number of schools and municipalities engage in initiatives that promote healthy foods and eating. Some of these initiatives however are not focused only on healthy eating alone, but involve objectives to promote more sustainable consumption through developing organic supply chains for school food services. The question therefore arises whether these two change objectives and drivers interact. This paper investigates the interrelation between the two objectives: healthy eating and organic consumption. Can these two goals be reached in one go as previous studies indicate? Is it so that developing either of these strategies leads to a raise of awareness in school food services in such a way that the other strategy is supported at the same time? The paper investigates this possible twin ship by studying characteristics of school food services in Denmark and in Germany. In both cases delivery of school food is voluntary and thus subject to an active decision by schools. The study uses “proxies” as an indicator for healthy eating, such as availability of healthier food items, adoption of food and health issues in curricular activities etc. The study was initiated in Denmark, where a web-based questionnaire methodology was developed. The questionnaire was distributed to schools that were service, and answered by school food coordinators. As a second step the questionnaire was translated and adapted to be used in Germany. The questionnaire explored the attitudes, policies and actions in relation to organic and healthy foods served in the schools. Both Danish and German results indicate that schools with organic supply tend to be healthier when measured in terms of “proxies” for healthy eating

Organic school meals in three Danish municipalities

In order to prevent children and young people from becoming obese, healthier eating patterns are urgent. Organic school meals may be an effective strategy to provide healthy food to children. The purpose of this study was to take a closer look into the current status of organic school meal systems in Denmark, by conducting a case study of three municipalities in the Zealand region that have the most developed models for school meals service in this country. These municipalities have for some years introduced organic food for sale in their primary schools, with three quite different approaches. Copenhagen has established a large central kitchen, producing partly organic food that is heated and sold in tuck shops at the schools. Roskilde cooperates with an organic catering company, delivering food to be sold in school canteens. Gladsaxe has part-time employed staff preparing and selling food at each school, and these people are educated about organic food by a municipal coordinator. Based on interviews with key informants in the three municipalities, the report describes the involved actors, interactions among actors, and barriers and future plans regarding an increased consumption of organic food in school meals. Similarities and differences between the municipalities are discussed. The main challenges for an increased consumption of organic food in schools are related to lack of infrastructure in the schools such as kitchens and dining halls, and that the school meal systems developed so far are not well rooted among the pupils, teachers, other school staff and the parents

DOES ORGANIC FOOD INTERVENTION IN SCHOOL LEAD TO CHANGED DIETARY PATTERNS?

During adolescence food habits, physical activity, and life style of young people are easily influenced by a number of actors and phenomena in the environment including parents, friends, advertisements and all of the changes occurring in society. The meal patterns formed during adolescence will be continuously influenced into their adulthood even following generations in the future. Since school increasingly is taking a role in both food provision and in health, environment and nutrition education of young people by implementing healthy and environmental friendly policies, it is relevant to investigate the relation between the different components of such interventions. In other words it is relevant to ask the question: does organic food supply police go hand in hand with healthy eating policies. This study that has been made possible through the iPOPY project looks at the relationship in Danish and Norwegian school food setting by asking school headmaster about their policies and operational procedure in relation to school food. The purpose of the study is to explore the relationship “green” food policies & praxises to “healthy” food policies & praxises in public school food settings. The outcome of the research/questionnaire will be a mapping of serving practices in relation to healthy eating and the relation to attitudes and practices of organic procurement and policies

Promoting sustainable consumption and healthy eating: A comparative study among public schools in Denmark, Germany, Finland & Italy

Since the Ottawa charter on the importance of health promotion in settings the school has been named as one of the most important arenas for interventions to promote physical activity and healthy eating. Especially the school food service has been the object of a change agenda that has been named the European school food revolution. This revolution is characterized not only attempts to promote healthy eating but also by attempts to make food supply and consumption more sustainable by integrating organic procurement policies. The current study aims at investigating how these two agendas work together. Do they compete or do they go hand in hand as previous studies suggest? And if this is the case does organic food schemes at school and related curricular activities then induce healthier eating behaviours among children? The research that is part of the iPOPY study was conducted among school food coordinators in public primary/secondary schools (children age from 6 to 15 years old) in Denmark, Germany, Finland and Italy. The study was initiated in Denmark, and subsequently performed in the other three countries through a web‐based questionnaire. The questionnaire was translated and adapted to fit the different languages and food cultures. The questionnaire researched the attitude, policies and serving practices regarding promoting organic foods and healthy eating habits through school food service and classroom activities. The data suggest that schools with organic supply tend to develop organisational environments that a more supportive for healthy eating than their non organic counterparts. However the results were only significant for Denmark and Italy, In Germany results were significant in some cases where as for Finland there were no differences or results were contradictory. The findings suggest the school food revolution is driven by different agendas but that awareness raising on nutrition and sustainability issues seems to be an important feature of many change processes. Findings also suggest that the two agendas although separated in the scientific literature is much more integrated in the everyday life perspective of school practitioner

Young peoples’ voice on organic food and health in schools

It is important that children are provided with a solid foundation for making sound decisions in relation to health and that health aspects be incorporated into their daily life. In this connection, public schools are important health promoting platforms due to their potential for encouraging interest, knowledge and learning about health related issues. The central idea for the study has been to address pupil perceptions and not merely to emphasise a narrow professional approach. In order for health initiatives, offered in connection with public schools, i.e. initiatives aimed at the available food selection and class room teaching, to impact children's day-to-day health, the basic assumption has been that pupils must see the initiatives as relevant. Therefore it is important that these initiatives address the children's interests and values in connection with ecology and health. Thus children can be engaged as stakeholders in a way that encourages healthy behaviour and delegates shared responsibility for their own individual health. Devising and implementing different health promotion efforts often originate in a professional settings and i.e. decision makers such as health professionals, teachers and civil servants approach the tasks according to their professional background and specific agendas. However, in an active social field such as a school, the narrow administrative outlook collides with a completely different and disorganized everyday outlook. It may be assumed that children view issues such as ecology and health entirely dependent on their individual values and attitudes. This collides with traditional administrative logic. An administrative outlook expects strategies and interventions to be governed by rational motives and evidence. Public administrative bodies are expected to be able to provide objective and proven facts that justify strategies and interventions based on well-established expertise within a well defined technical or scientific domain. Such areas of domain expertise are created and justified on the grounds of the traditional scientific disciplines characterized by stable well defined rules determining which theories and methodologies are accepted as making sense. These domains of expertise are furthermore characterized by particular preferences for paradigms from either the natural or social sciences. Such paradigms are seldom compatible with the reality of the everyday life of pupils where concepts and meaning intermingle. The main purpose of the study has been to shed light on primary and lower secondary pupils' everyday experience with ecology and health in connection with the public organic school food programmes in the municipality of Copenhagen. Moreover the aim has been to investigate to which degree the pupils experience a connection between the organic food program and the underlying organic supply chain and classroom initiatives in subjects related to ecology and health. In February 2008, we approached a public school which proved willing to participate in our study. Subsequently, over a four week period, we designed an interview guide used to conduct the focus group interviews which were then transcribed. The findings from the focus group interviews show a broad interest in subjects relating to ecology, organic foods and health. A few of the findings will be reported here. The full analysis will be made available as an iPOPY working report. The results show that the ecological supply chain behind the KØSS food programme does not seem to have triggered greater involvement on the part of the interviewed pupils regarding the organic agenda. Respondents said that they had felt them selves being involved in the decision making process concerning the school's organic food programme. This was the case for pupils from both the 5th and 7th grades. Most of the 5th grade pupils knew why the food sold in the school food stall was organic and indicated that it was because their school was part of the KØSS food programme because the school is located in Copenhagen. A single pupil knew about the link between the initiatives ties to another municipal campaign:”Ecology is nothing but pure water”. The 7th graders similarly agreed that school food is organice due to the fact that the school participates in the KØSS programme. When asked who they thought had made the decision to introduce organic food in schools, the Copenhagen municipality, City Hall and the dairy company, Arla, were mentioned. Likewise, several pupils believed that the school had been part of the decision making process. The pupils mentioned a number of different courses where the two subjects, ecology and health, had been part of what they were taught. Nevertheless, it was not clear to greater part of the pupils whether these subjects were a regular part of the course or not. They pupils gave different indications of when they had been taught on ecology and health. And they mentioned that the subjects of ecology and health have been introduced in home economics, Danish, math, nature and science, social science and geography