Impact of Legislation on School Nutrition Environments Sample Clauses

Impact of Legislation on School Nutrition Environments. One of the overarching goals of the CNR was to create accountability and transparency in schools, as well as to support and encourage them to make positive changes in their school food policies and environments.30 Since the inception of the CNR, schools have made some progress in developing healthier nutrition environments, although it generally has been slow.26 However, a 2009 RWJF report noted that in the two years after the implementation of the new guidelines, the majority of schools nationwide had developed wellness policies, but many were ineffective, vague, or hard to enforce.31 These findings were corroborated by a nationally representative study that found that even though schools were making positive changes in developing school gardens, participating in farm-to-school programs, and improving the nutritional quality of items offered, the impact of these changes was negligible and there remained a large margin for improvement.26 Similarly, a 2013 RWJF report assessed the impact and implications of the 2004 mandate five years following the required start date in 2006 and the findings revealed that compliance with developing required comprehensive wellness policies was low.3 One of the main reasons that schools have struggled to develop strong wellness policies was that the CNR contains critical issues that contribute to its ineffectiveness.32 First and foremost, financial assistance is not offered to schools to help them implement their policies, and this strongly dissuades them from doing so.32 Next, the law requires schools to create minimal standards for nutrition guidelines instead of necessitating that schools set more ambitious guidelines.32 The wording of the mandate is also ambiguous and does not give schools ample guidance in setting clear and concrete goals for nutrition guidelines.32 Another notable issue is that up until this past year, evaluations of school wellness policy implementation was not mandated, which made it difficult to determine their effectiveness.29,33 Although many schools nationwide have developed a required wellness policy, many have missing sections and/or are poorly-written as a result of the vague guidelines of the CNR.3 The regulation of competitive foods is another area of inadequacy. United States elementary schools tend to have significantly stronger regulation of competitive foods than middle or high schools, but in general, the competitive foods section of wellness policies in schools nationwide is usually th...