Fast food “clusters” seen around schools
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Most Chicago kids have a wide array of fast food options waiting for them just a few minutes’ walk from school, a new study shows.
This means kids from kindergarten to high school have easy access to high-fat, low-nutrition snacks and meals before, after and even during school, Dr. S. Bryn Austin of Children’s Hospital in Boston and her colleagues report. And it isn’t just a Chicago problem, Austin told Reuters Health; she expects the situation is similar in urban centers nationwide.
One third of children and teens eat fast food on any given day, Austin and her colleagues note in the American Journal of Public Health. “That’s a huge proportion of kids, and we know that when children eat fast foods they’re getting more calories and more fat, more added sugars and fewer fruits and vegetables,” Austin said.
And kids are eating fast food much more often than they used to; nearly 20 percent of calories that 12- to 18-year-olds eat come from fast food, compared with 6.5 percent in the late 1970s.
Austin and her team used statistical methods to determine if fast food restaurants are concentrated near schools in the Chicago area. Their 2002 analysis included 1,292 schools and 613 fast food restaurants.
On average, schools were about 500 meters away from at least one fast food restaurant. Thirty percent of schools had at least one restaurant within 400 meters, an easy five-minute walk, while 80 percent had one or more within 800 meters, or about 10 minutes away on foot. Restaurants showed a three- to four-fold greater concentration around schools than if they had been randomly distributed.
The high concentration of fast food restaurants creates an unhealthy food environment that schools and communities must address, the researchers assert. Schools can help in many ways, Austin told Reuters Health, for example by not allowing students to bring fast food purchases onto school grounds, and restricting the ability of students to leave the campus during lunch. Municipal or state initiatives could also be undertaken to help force fast food restaurants to offer healthier choices.
“What we need is to provide our children and provide our students with more healthful and more affordable alternatives to fast foods in our school neighborhoods,” Austin said. She points to initiatives in some parts of the country where schools contract with farmers to provide fresh vegetables, fresh fruit and whole grains for student meals.
“As a community it’s our responsibility to take the food environment seriously, especially in school neighborhoods, because that’s an investment in our children’s health,” Austin concluded.
SOURCE: American Journal of Public Health, September 2005.
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