文章基本信息

标题：Lunch is ready ... but not healthy: An analysis of lunches served in childcare centres in two Canadian provinces.
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作者：Ward, Stephanie ; Belanger, Mathieu ; Donovan, Denise 等
期刊名称：Canadian Journal of Public Health
印刷版ISSN：0008-4263
出版年度：2017
期号：July
出版社：Canadian Public Health Association
摘要：In Canada, over half of children between 6 months and 5 years of age spend close to 30 hours a week in childcare centres (CCs). (1) Children attending these centres full time typically receive one to two meals and up to two snacks per day, as recommended by most provincial nutrition policies. (2-4) Therefore, CCs can significantly contribute to children's daily recommended intakes of foods and nutrients. Some studies have shown that children attending full time consume half to three-quarters of their daily energy requirements when they attend CCs; (5,6) however, US cross-sectional studies have reported that children in the childcare setting consume too few vegetables, fruit (with the exception of fruit juices), and whole grain products, and too much saturated fat and sugar. (7,8) Little is known about the quality of the foods served in CCs in Canada.

Nutrition guidelines or policies for Canadian CCs vary greatly across provinces. For example, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island have detailed requirements specifying which foods are, or are not, to be served to children in CCs. (4,9) Nova Scotia guidelines also specify the quantity of foods to be served and recommend that foods of a variety of colours, flavours, textures, shapes and temperatures be served during the day. (4) In other provinces, including New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, nutrition guidelines are much less detailed, recommending only that CCs offer a certain number of servings of each of the four main food groups presented in Health Canada's Eating Well with Canada's Food Guide (i.e., vegetables and fruit, grain products, milk and substitutes, and meat and substitutes). (2,3) Implementation of such guidelines requires that childcare staff know the food guide and know what constitutes a serving of each food group. Since it has been reported that childcare staff's nutrition-related knowledge is relatively low, (10) it is possible that nutrition guidelines that are too broad lead CCs to offer suboptimal quality of food to children. Moreover, since linguistic (11) and regional (12) differences in the quality of lunches served in public schools have been documented, further examination in other linguistic and geographic contexts is warranted.