School food environments and the obesity issue: content,structural determinants,and agency in Canadian high schools |
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| Authors: | Anthony Winson |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph, Mackinnon Building, Guelph, ON, Canada, N1G 2W1 |
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| Abstract: | To understand the phenomenon of the rapidly increasing prevalence of overweight and obese children and youth, it is especially
important to examine the school food environment, the role of structural factors in shaping this environment, and the resulting
nutrition and health outcomes. The paper examines research on school food environments in the US and Canada. It notes evidence
of widespread availability of poor nutrition products in both environments and delineates reasons for the situation, and examines
initiatives presently being undertaken in a number of jurisdictions in both countries to encourage healthy eating in schools.
Empirical data are presented from a pilot study of high schools in the Canadian province of Ontario. The study documents the
extent of student purchasing of nutrient-poor foods and beverages, and the structural factors internal and external to the
school that appear responsible for the availability of such products in food environments in this critical institutional sphere.
The paper also examines positive local initiatives in high schools that seek to encourage healthy eating in schools.
Anthony Winson PhD
is a professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Guelph. He has written on agriculture,
food and rural development, and restructuring issues related to Canada and the Third World for more than 20 years. Among his
books are The Intimate Commodity: Food and the Development of the Agro-Industrial Complex in Canada (Garamond 1993) and, more recently, Contingent Work, Disrupted Lives (University of Toronto 2002, with Belinda Leach) which examines economic restructuring, the changing world of work, and the
factors underlying sustainability in small manufacturing-dependent rural communities in several regions of Ontario. This book
won the John Porter Book Prize of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association for 2003. Dr. Winson’s current work
is focused on the analysis of factors shaping the contemporary Canadian food environment and their role in producing what
has been termed the “epidemic of obesity.” Particular attention is being paid to supermarkets and schools as part of broader-ranging
research on the political economic context of the food environment. |
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| Keywords: | Canada Food environment Food policy Nutrition Obesity Ontario Schools |
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