Impact of the school lunch program on overweight and obesity among junior high school students: a nationwide study in Japan.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Japan has experienced a low prevalence of childhood obesity. The Japanese nationwide school lunch program is suggested to have helped this phenomenon, but it has not been proven. METHODS:From official statistics, we combined annual data for 2006-15 about the prefecture-level school lunch coverage rate for public junior high school students and the prefecture-level nutritional indicators calculated by randomly selected age-sex groups of 13-15-year olds: the percentage of overweight, obese or underweight children, who are 20% heavier, 30% heavier or 20% lighter than the standard weight by sex, age and height; and mean body weight (kg) or height (cm). We estimated the impact of the school lunch coverage rate on the nutritional indicators in subsequent years, adjusting for the lagge

SUBMITTER: Miyawaki A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6636685 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature