obesity-congress-2016_scientifictracks-abstracts

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Volume 6, Issue 4(Suppl) J Obes Weight Loss Ther
ISSN: 2165-7904 JOWT, an open access journal
Page 40
Notes:
Obesity Congress 2016
August 08-10, 2016
conferenceseries.com
August 08-10, 2016 Toronto, Canada
6th World Congress on
Obesity
Impact of nutrition policy in preschools – A Caribbean perspective
Anisa Ramcharitar-Bourne, Selby Nichols and Neela Badrie
The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago
The prevalence of childhood obesity has increased globally and this has prompted population policy approaches to tackle this
problem. Since schools are an ideal background for these interventions, this study sought to evaluate the existing national
school nutrition policies and make recommendations for future research. Seventeen Government / Public Early Childhood Care and
Education (ECCE) Centers were randomly selected from each of the seven educational districts in Trinidad. Each of these schools
was then matched to its nearest privately-owned ECCE. Each school completed a questionnaire examining food rules, whether
they received meals from the National Schools Dietary Services Limited (NSDSL), and the presence of a school garden. Type of
school differences among dietary variables were assessed using the Mann Whitney U-test, while differences among continuous
anthropometric variables were assessed via the independent samples t-test. All analyses were conducted using SPSS version 15 (SPSS,
Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Preschoolers attending private schools had significantly higher body fat, viewed more hours of weekend
television (p=0.048) and drank more juice-type sugar sweetened beverages (p=0.008), while parents of public preschoolers were more
likely to create a healthy home environment. Public schools were more likely to have school gardens, ‘fruit times’ and ‘no soda’ policies
and they were also more likely to receive lunches from the NSDSL. All nutrition policies except one were ‘undocumented’. Teacher
comments revealed an urgent need to document nutrition policy at the preschool level, update old policy, and provide nutrition
education for teachers and parents.
Biography
Anisa Ramcharitar-Bourne completed her PhD in Human Ecology (specialization Nutritional Sciences) in 2014. She is a Registered Dietitian, trained at St. Louis University,
USA and has gained US certification in Childhood and Adolescent Weight Management. She is currently an Instructor at the UWI and is involved in a number of on-going
research projects in the areas of picky eating, childhood obesity, mindful eating practices and sensorial analysis. She is currently a Consultant on a project entitled ‘Healthy
Bites’ with the U.W.I. Preschool in Trinidad. She is passionate about positively influencing the health of children through education, research and policy development.
Anisa Ramcharitar-Bourne et al., J Obes Weight Loss Ther 2016, 6:4(Suppl)