From Myplate to Mcteacher's Night: Communication about Nutrition in a Middle School

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:  In 2004, Albert Bandura wrote, “Human health is a social matter, not just an individual one. A comprehensive approach to health promotion also requires changing the practices of social systems that have widespread effects on human health” (p. 143).  For children, a comprehensive approach to health promotion includes the social system that is designed to have significant effects on American children, the school system.  While the school system has been called upon to help address obesity epidemic (e.g.: Centers for Disease Control, 2015; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2012), it's hypothesized that schools may offer children contradictory nutrition messages.  One set of messages comes from formal nutrition education in the classroom, while the other set of messages are communicated in the larger school environment in the form of signage, school lunch options, and vending availability and content - the latter largely influenced by revenue restrictions and Big Food.  Situated as a grounded theory study, yet gleaning sensitizing concepts from an ecological approach to social cognitive theory, this case study explores the communication received about nutrition education in a middle school environment.

Methods: This submission is part of a larger dissertation.  Methods included observation of nutrition education modules delivered to seventh and eighth graders at a middle school in upstate New York (33 days during the 2014-2015 academic year), focus groups with students who participated in the school-based nutrition education (n=28 students), and interviews with key informants (the district superintendent; the nutrition education teacher).  This study complements and expands health communication scholarship, taking a qualitative approach to a topic often explored using quasi-experimental and randomized experiment designs.

Results:  Preliminary results indicate that the school environment is indeed a complex nutrition environment for children to navigate.  While communication received in the classroom encourages children to follow USDA's MyPlate, vending machines across the hallway offer children snack and beverage options that contradict what children learn in class about healthy snacking.  For some children, this is an indication that "the school doesn’t really care,” which is fundamentally out of alignment with schools being a source of meaningful nutrition education and guidance for our youth.

Conclusions:  The messages students receive in the classroom about healthy eating contradict the messages from the larger school environment, as communicated by the food available to students.  Barthes (2008) discusses food as a “system of communication” (p. 30).  Aligned with this, the communicative messages about nutrition education in schools can be inconsistent, having implications for the efficacy of nutrition education.  Nutrition education in a classroom may not be enough to change attitudes or behaviors if the larger environment is not consistent with these messages.

Implications for research and/or practice:  Middle schoolers are able to identify the inconsistencies in nutrition messages, which has implications regarding their adherence to the education received on the topic.  Future research might investigate the ways in which children select vending content after participation in a nutrition education course, or otherwise determine the ways in which children who receive nutrition education conceptualize the larger school nutrition environment as compared to their peers.