The Impact of the School Lunch Program on Reducing Obesity among School-Age Children

Abstract

Obesity is one of the most significant issues among the school ages children from both the developed as well as developing countries. The poor eating behavior and lack of physical activity are amongst the main causes of obesity in the school ages children. This is known that the school period is the pivotal time for the adoption of interventions such as healthy eating and more physical activities for a long time. This review was conducted to evaluate the interventions that can be helpful for the school-aged children so that their health will be improved, and the weight can be maintained. The overweight and obesity problems at a young age lead to chronic diseases in adulthood. Therefore, the implementation of the interventions is necessary for the better health of the children. Five databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, ScienceDirect, CINAHL, MEDLINE was employed to search the research studies conducted on the interventions in the school lunch programs to decrease the obesity issue among the children. Ten relevant studies were extracted and included in this review. The inclusion criteria for the research study in this review was the research papers published after 2010. The research papers published before 2010 were excluded from this review. Besides, another exclusion criterion was the research studies that did not provide relevant information about the objectives of the study. Data from the selected research studies were presented in the tabular form that explained the outcomes of the studies. The research studies included in this review articles employed the primary data collection methods in the research design. The findings of the studies indicated several interventions to improve the eating behavior of the children as well as physical fitness. The practical-based interventions include the food items in the school lunches such as more intake of fruits and vegetables and avoid the intake of packed items that were found useful in the intake of nutrients. Besides, the interventions related to increasing physical activities such as sports were provided with the positive results in the prevention of obesity among the children. In addition, the education programs for the parents and children were also found useful in reducing the obesity issues as it will increase the knowledge of the children and the parents about healthy eating. Future studies are needed to include the interventions of techniques related to behavioural therapy of children in addition to the education for the parents as they are the main agents to improve the nutrition habits of the children.