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Accepted manuscript

Developing and using a school menu healthiness assessment tool to analyse school food provision in Wales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2025

Alice Gilmour Open the ORCID record for Alice Gilmour [Opens in a new window]  and
Ruth Fairchild Open the ORCID record for Ruth Fairchild [Opens in a new window]
Alice Gilmour*
Affiliation:
School of Sport and Health Sciences, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Western Avenue, Llandaff, Cardiff, CF5 2YB
Ruth Fairchild
Affiliation:
School of Sport and Health Sciences, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Western Avenue, Llandaff, Cardiff, CF5 2YB
*
*Corresponding author: Alice Gilmour, School of Sport and Health Sciences, Western Avenue, Llandaff, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Cardiff, CF5 2YB; (phone: +4407939 002337; email: [email protected])
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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Objectives:

To design and develop a new, innovative and valid School Menu Healthiness Assessment Tool that is suitable for the quantitative and qualitative analysis of school food and drink provision. Secondly, to analyse primary and secondary school menus and price lists pan-Wales to ascertain their healthiness and whether free school meal eligible pupils can afford to access healthy, nutritious food across the school day.

Design:

Codable items and categories of school food and drink provision were operationalised before the tool underwent iterative development and testing. Then, cross-sectional content analysis of publicly available documents detailing school food provision (i.e., menus and price lists).

Setting:

Primary and secondary schools in Wales, United Kingdom.

Subjects:

In total, 82 canteen menus were sourced online. This comprised local authority catering for primary (n 22) and secondary (n 19) schools plus school-organised catering for primary (n 5) and secondary (n 36) schools.

Results:

Intercoder reliability testing found high agreeability between coders, demonstrating that the tool and data interpretation are reproducible and trustworthy. The free school meal allowance is not wholly sufficient for all secondary school pupils to purchase a healthy meal from the school canteen. Moreover, the tool identified that oily fish and wholegrain provision were lacking across many menus.

Conclusions:

A valuable tool was created, useful for researchers and other health professionals (i.e., dietitians) who are required to analyse the healthiness of school food provision in line with the latest nutritional requirements. This study provides insight into the current school food and drink landscape pan-Wales.

Type
Research Paper
Information
Public Health Nutrition , Accepted manuscript , pp. 1 - 20
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Nutrition Society