Lunch on School Days in Canada: Examining Contributions to Nutrient and Food Group Intakes and Differences Across Eating Locations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Recent federal proposals in Canada have called for changes in the delivery and funding of school lunches. Yet little evidence has documented the nutritional quality of meals eaten by school children needed to inform school lunch reforms. This study assessed the dietary contributions of lunch foods to daily food and nutrient intakes on school days and compared dietary intakes across eating locations (school, home, and off-campus). Nationally representative 24-hour dietary recall data were obtained from the 2015 Canadian Community Health Survey-Nutrition (n = 2540 children aged 6–17 years). Descriptive statistics were used to assess the % of daily energy, nutrients and food groups contributed by lunch foods. Multivariable age-stratified linear regression models examined differences in lunch-time consumption of energy, food groups and nutrients across eating locations. On average, foods reported at lunch provided ∼26% of daily calories. Relative to energy, lunch foods provided lower contributions of: dark green and orange vegetables, whole fruit, fruit juice, whole grains, milk and alternatives, fluid milk, minimally nutritious foods including sugary beverages, and several related nutrients including total sugars, vitamins A, D, B6, and B12, riboflavin, calcium, magnesium and potassium. Yet, lunch foods provided proportionally higher contributions of grain products, non-whole grains, meat and alternatives and sodium. Children aged 14–17 years who ate lunch at school reported higher intakes of total vegetables and fruit, whole fruit, whole grains, fiber, vitamin C, and magnesium but reported fewer calories from sugary beverages compared to their peers who ate lunch off-campus. Relative to its contribution to energy, lunch on school days contributed to proportionally lower intakes of many healthful foods (dark green and orange vegetables, whole fruit, whole grains and fluid milk), but also proportionally lower intakes of sugary beverages. This study adds to the growing body of evidence on dietary concerns during school-time for Canadian children and highlights particular challenges for adolescents consuming lunch off-campus. Canadian Institutes of Health Research (FRN 151,549).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".