‘Breaking Barriers, Breaking Bread’: Pilot study to evaluate acceptability of a school breakfast program utilising donated food

Enablers and barriers of harnessing food waste to address food insecurity: a scoping review

Despite producing sufficient food for the global population, the growing prevalence of food insecurity in developed countries is cause for concern. The millions of metric tons of food wasted each year could be used instead to drastically lower rates of food insecurity and address food sustainability. In this scoping review, we aimed to identify barriers to and enablers of harnessing food waste across food sectors, including food retail, households, and food rescue organizations, to address food insecurity in a developed country, Australia. The findings demonstrate that research on and responsibility for harnessing food waste for food insecurity has predominantly fallen on ill-equipped food rescue organizations. Three primary policy advancements paramount to harnessing food waste to address food insecurity include (1) improving partnerships and subsidies to minimize transportation costs for redistributing imperfect or surplus food from farmers and retailers to those who with food insecurity; (2) enhancing existing partnerships and subsidies to stably involve more nutrition experts in food rescue organizations to improve the quality of foods being redistributed to those facing food insecurity; and (3) initiating interventions and campaigns that combine the following 5 characteristics: free to the participants; address food literacy; use multiple mass-media tools; are age tailored; and frame messages within personal values.

Sociodemographic and clinical factors associated with breakfast skipping among high school students

AIM

Breakfast plays an important role in the academic performance and mental health of adolescents. This study explored factors associated with breakfast skipping in high school students in South Korea.

METHODS

A cross-sectional survey was completed by 1684 high school students. A logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine the factors associated with skipping breakfast, including sociodemographic factors, mental health problems (such as depression and anxiety), sleep and smartphone use patterns.

RESULTS

A total of 29.2% of the adolescents reported skipping breakfast and girls were significantly more likely to skip breakfast than boys (P < .001). The breakfast skipping group spent more time using a smartphone on weekdays [mean (SD) = 186.2 (180.0) min/d] than the breakfast eating group [mean (SD) = 110.2 (111.5) min/d] (P < .001). The Korean scale for smartphone addiction (S-scale) score was higher in the breakfast skipping group (P = .006). Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that female gender, poor academic performance (odds ratio (OR),  1.575; 95% CI,  1.166-2.126, P = .003), depression (OR,  1.023; 95% CI,  1.002-1.043, P = .031), time spent using a smartphone on weekdays (OR,  1.003; 95% CI,  1.002-1.004, P < .001), and low parental monitoring of smartphone use were significantly associated with skipping breakfast.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings indicate that unhealthy lifestyle including smartphone overuse negatively affects breakfast eating in adolescents. School-based nutritional programs should be designed to assess and overcome various individual factors associated with breakfast skipping.

Food Rescue Intervention Evaluations: A Systematic Review

Food rescue, the practice of gathering food that could otherwise be wasted and redirecting it for human consumption, represents a critical opportunity to improve food security and reduce waste. As global interest in reducing hunger and food waste grows, better insight is needed to assess and compare the effectiveness of different models of food rescue. We conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed studies evaluating food rescue interventions with the aim of synthesizing findings and comparing methodologies. We searched PubMed, Academic Search Ultimate, and Science Citation Index for studies published worldwide, in English, through June 2019. Studies were included that: a) evaluated an existing or proposed food rescue intervention and, b) quantitatively or qualitatively measured the intervention impact. All nineteen included studies were observational and the intervention types ranged widely. The most commonly reported metric was the weight of food recovered. Few studies reported client outcome measures. The included studies suggested promising effects of food rescue interventions, including positive return on investment, decreased environmental burden, large quantities of food rescued and clients served, and high stakeholder satisfaction. Comparison across studies was challenging, however, due to inconsistent metrics and insufficiently detailed methodology. This review documents a need for additional evaluation of food rescue interventions and recommends a standardized methodology. Additional dialogue among key stakeholders is warranted to develop consistent, meaningful metrics to assess food rescue.