Quality of Canadian kids' school lunches reveals room to improve

Parents tasked with preparing school lunches might reach for convenient packaged foods, but the author of a new study says kids across Canada aren't eating enough nutritious food during school hours.

Claire Tugault-Lafleur, a PhD candidate in the University of British Columbia's human nutrition program, says the study is the first to analyze differences in dietary intake patterns between school hours and non-school hours.

The study published today in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism examined the latest data from the 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey involving over 4,800 children between the ages of six and 17.

Though the data is 13 years old, the study is intended to set a baseline look at children's school-hour food consumption. There is data from 2015 that is just now being made available to researchers, and Tugault-Lafleur will be using that data for a similar analysis. She will then compare the 2015 results with those from 2004, to get a good look at what has changed and what hasn't.

"Many provinces now have school nutrition policies and guidelines," Tugault-Lafleur told CBC Newfoundland and Labrador's On The Go. "Those were really not as common in 2004. I think it's encouraging to see that there's been a lot of changes with regard to policy, so it will be interesting to see whether we do see an improvement over time."

Tugault-Lafleur says researchers used an index of 11 key components of a healthy diet examining all the food and drinks kids consumed between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m., and the average score was 53.4 out of 100 points.

She says children in Quebec had the highest score and kids in Newfoundland and Labrador were at the bottom of the list.

The lowest scores were for dark green and orange vegetables, fruit, whole grains and milk and alternatives.

Tugault-Lafleur says that since 2004, all provinces have issued guidelines affecting foods sold at schools, whether in vending machines or cafeterias.