Leading Study on Healthy Food Snacks in Children

BBC News recently wrote an article on the latest study performed by Cardiff University, in which they measured the amount of healthy food snacks of children from ages 9 to 11 that was consumed in 43 schools. All 23 schools were asked to start selling fruit snacks at a variety of different prices, and to stop selling all sweets. Each school also continued their own existing policies on bringing food into school.

After the children were surveyed on how much fruit they eat, there was a limited increase in the number of fruit snacks children ate with the addition of fruit snacks alone. There were though, a much higher percentage of children who ate fruit snacks in schools that had a “no food” policy, and schools that only allowed children to bring in healthy fruit snacks to school.

Professor Laurence Moore, from the Cardiff Institute mentions:

"Our results suggest that children are more willing to use fruit tuck shops and eat fruit as a snack at school if they and their friends are not allowed to take in unhealthy snacks. This highlights the importance of friends' behaviour and of peer modelling, and of the need for schools to put policies in place to back up health interventions."

This in turn has led to talks of banning unhealthy food snacks in all schools across the UK.