Grantees

Project Description: School meal programs provide 30 million low-income children with 2/3 of the calories needed per day, providing a powerful tool to reduce racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in food insecurity and obesity-related disease, including diabetes.. Although school meals have nutrition standards that limit the amount of sodium, calories, and saturated fat, in our team’s prior studies, parents have expressed concern about the high amount of ultra-processed foods provided in school meals. This proposal aims to build the evidence for interventions and policies to reduce children’s consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPF, foods made using industrial processing methods with added ingredients such as sugar, salt, fat, and food additives) to impact their health and development. First, we will conduct focus groups with parents of schoolaged children from low-income and minority backgrounds to understand knowledge and perceptions of UPF, their associated health and behavioral impacts, and contributors to UPF availability and consumption in children, both in and out-of-school. Second, we will interview food service directors to better understand the barriers and facilitators of providing less UPF and more fresh and unprocessed food in school meals. We will meet with an advisory group of policy advocates, school and food service directors, community organizations, USDA officials, and parents to guide us in interpreting the results and identifying and designing school-based interventions and policies to reduce ultra-processed food consumption.