Applying Background Methodologies Over a 4-week period, daily food purchases were gathered and the proportions of green, yellow, and red foods offered and purchased were compared. These results suggest that the nutritional policy for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) promotes the offerings of a wide array of foods. Schools should consider a nutrition policy that regulates the sale of competitive foods. In this study the problem that is being addressed and researched is childhood obesity. This study is very important for health care administrators to study because it effects the current population as well as the generations to come. Many patients that come into a hospital are overweight or obese, and knowing that it starts in childhood and how to stop it can save lives.
The study is done to see what kind of food is offered in public schools for the kids to eat. Portions of foods, color variety, and nutritional values as well as determining what the foods are that are competitive and purchased most. The main research question is not stated within the article but I would guess that the question is, ‘what are the competitive foods within the public school system’? The information shows that even with foods made readily available for students to be nutritionally conscious there still needs to be more work done to make healthier foods more competitive.
Within the article it is evident that the hypothesis is that the school districts are not offering a wide enough variety of foods with beneficial nutritional value. “The practice of poor dietary habits is one of the many factors often linked to childhood overweight. In fact, there is consensus among the national nutrition monitoring surveys that adolescents today are consuming more than the recommended amounts of sugar, total fat, and saturated fat, while not consuming enough fruits, vegetables, fiber, and calcium.1 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monitors adolescent dietary behavior through its annual Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System. In 2003, only 22.0% of students surveyed had eaten 5 or more servings of fruits and vegetables, excluding French fries, fried potatoes, or potato chips, in 7 days preceding the survey; and only 17.1% drank 3 or more glasses of milk per day during these 7 days.2 Further, adolescents' intake of fruit beverages and sports drinks that contain little to no fruit juice doubled between the late-1970s and the mid-1990s.3 These dietary practices may partly explain why the rates of childhood overweight have nearly tripled in the past 30 years.” (2011)
The independent variables within the study are the students; the dependent variables are the food groups, colors, and variety available for purchasing in the school. The study was based on the idea that the schools are where children spend a majority of their adolescence, and with offering a better variety of food and conditioning students to make better choices in their food consumption they can lessen the number of children with weight problems. Another independent variable that is present in the study is