Abstract
Obesity rates in children and adolescents have reached epidemic proportions across the United States. This rise in obesity may be related to decreasing levels of physical activity among school aged children. A second factor may be the negative effects of school lunch programs, a source of much of the daily nutrition for school aged students. The purpose of this study was to examine whether there was a relationship between children’s lunch choices, including school lunch, vegetarian alternatives and lunch brought from home, and students’ levels of obesity as measured by the Body Mass Index (BMI). Participants in the study included 15 male and 25 female elementary school children aged 9-12 years recruited from two public schools. Each student completed a questionnaire that elicited information about their school lunch choices, their level of physical activity at home and at school, and their food choice preferences at home for breakfast and dinner. The students’ height and weight were obtained from the Physical Education teacher at the two participating schools. These data were used to compute a Body Mass Index (BMI) Score for each individual student, which was converted into a BMI percentile-for-age score as a measure of level of obesity. The researcher used descriptive statistics to summarize students’ food choices and activity levels. A t-test was also conducted to test whether student gender was a predictor of their BMI score. Finally, a single factor ANOVA analysis was conducted to identify any relationship between the participants’ lunch choices and their BMI percentile-for-age scores. The results of these tests were not statistically significant. Results did not indicate a link between students’ gender or type of school lunch and their levels of obesity. These findings may have been a result of the number of subjects in the study, the wide range of ages included, the wording of items in the questionnaire, and/or the use of BMI scores as the sole measure of obesity. Since school aged children continue to consume a large portion of their daily nutrition through school lunch programs, further research is needed to identify the links between children’s school lunch choices and the rising rates of obesity among America’s children.