What Is this Intervention?

In Toronto, a group of kids file past a long buffet of cereal, toast, buns, yogurt and juice. They each fill their plates and bowls, then walk to tables and eat their meal. This scene ould take place in any Toronto restaurant on any given Sunday, but it’s a weekday, not a Sunday. The location is a school gymnasium, not a restaurant. And the time is 7:35 a.m., not high brunch.

Breakfast programs, like this one in Toronto, are intended to improve classroom behaviour and children’s ability to retain and learn new information by feeding students who might otherwise go hungry. According to the Food Research and Action Center (2003 & 2005), missing breakfast impairs learning. So, providing breakfast at school should:

• Improve student behaviour and learning
• Help students perform better academically
• Reduce absenteeism

In addition to providing a meal, Devaney and Fraker (1989) comment that the long-term intention of breakfast programs is to break the cycle of poverty by “remedy(ing) an education handicap of many children from low-income households” (p. 932).

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When Should this Intervention Be Used?

Although the majority of breakfast programs are intended for disadvantaged children whose families cannot provide this meal, the intervention could also be used in these instances:

• When parents are either absent or don’t have time in the morning to prepare breakfast due to erratic or overnight work schedules
• When children have to travel long distances to get to school from rural areas and therefore have to leave too early in the morning to eat or might be hungry again by the time they get to school
• When children simply do not have an appetite in the morning before leaving for school

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Issues to Consider when Using this Intervention

Consider these issues when using this intervention.

1. Who Will Benefit from the Program? Before implementing a breakfast program, first consider who will benefit from it. In many programs, school administrators and staff identify eligible children. Such a program is called a targeted program because only a limited number of selected children participate. But by targeting or singling out certain students, these already disadvantaged children can be further stigmatized. This serves as a new barrier where children might not participate for fear or shame of being identified as a victim of poverty or neglect (even if neither is the case).

One way to overcome this problem is by adopting a universal approach, making breakfast available to all children regardless of financial need. Although more costly, this avoids the potentially longer-term cost of academic failure. According to Sylvie Beaudry, a dietitian with the English Montreal School Board, her school board recently adopted a universal breakfast program for all high schools within their district for these reasons.

2. How Can Communities Ensure the Financial Viability of the Program? Whether they are targeted or universal, breakfast programs are all difficult to fund over the long haul. Hyndeman comments that, “Many are… vulnerable to the changing priorities of provincial governments and other sponsors” (2000, p.15). That’s because breakfast programs not only include the cost of the meal but also the costs of opening the cafeteria earlier, and providing pre-school supervision by faculty and administrators, and post-breakfast clean-up by the maintenance staff. To reduce these costs, many schools serve students breakfast in their classrooms. This eliminates the stigma because no distinction is made between students. It also reduces staffing costs and, if cold meals are served, reduces meal preparation costs too. Serving breakfasts in the classroom also has two unintended positive impacts. First, it can strengthen student-teacher relationships. The informal sharing of a meal can provide a warm atmosphere and an opportunity for teachers to learn about their students’ lives outside of school and this, in turn, might provide insights into reasons for academic difficulties. Second, when students clean up afterwards, they not only reduce maintenance costs, but also build a sense of responsibility.

3. How Do Communities Avoid Creating Dependency on the Program? In some cases, breakfast programs have evolved to address issues such as healthy eating habits, counseling of needy families, and caring for “neglected” children.

In the process, however, these programs also run the risk of serving as substitutes for the family and continue the dependency and helplessness that many disadvantaged people experience. In their 1994-1995 study of nine breakfast programs in Atlantic Canadian schools, Lynn McIntyre, Kim Travers, and Jutta B. Dayle found that many children were under the impression that institutions offered unlimited food and other goods “without monetary cost or labour in return” therefore creating what they refer to as “dependent professional clients” (McIntyre, Travers and Dayle, 1999, p. 198). To offset these very negative outcomes, McIntyre, Travers and Dayle suggest that programs remain grassroots and volunteer-based.

4. How Can Breakfast Programs Be Evaluated? On the one hand, who can criticize the desire to feed hungry children? On the other hand, just because they aspire to meet an important social need does not excuse breakfast programs from evaluation. Furthermore, despite the aspirations of the programs, no guarantee exists that the evaluations will yield positive results. Because of the social service component inherent in breakfast programs, program administrators tend to argue for and respond emotionally, appealing to goodwill, as an approach to evaluation. But as Williams, McIntryre, Dayle and Raine (2003) note, breakfast programs are ultimately “sold” on their potential to increase academic performance and attendance, and improvements in classroom behaviour, issues that lend themselves to measurement.

Even if the evaluations show that academic performance or classroom behaviour improved, those results cannot be linked to this single intervention. The breakfast program needs to be considered within the scope of a larger campaign. In addition, the results do not always show up in short-term measurements; some only accrue in the long term.

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Examples of this Intervention in Use

Consider these examples:

• Despite the issues mentioned above, breakfast programs continue to be introduced in schools across the country. In 1991, the Toronto Board of Education introduced a breakfast program to feed mostly disadvantaged children who were coming to school without having eaten breakfast and whose hunger affected school behaviour and performance. Brown (1993) reports that, a year later, 45% of the staff at schools participating in this breakfast program reported that students were “calmer, had more energy, (and) were more focused.” In addition, absenteeism decreased 0.1% and tardiness decreased 0.3%.
• A more unique example of this intervention in use is at Espace Jeunesse, a Montreal school that admits students with behavioural problems. The school, located near a Metro station, received complaints from the Societe de Transport de Montreal about their students’ behaviour while loitering at the station. The school set up a partnership with three volunteers from the Societe de Transport de Montreal and began offering students breakfast in addition to other educational interventions that informed students about appropriate behaviour. Within six months, the complaints stopped and student behaviour improved both at the station and in the classrooms.

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References

Birch, H.G., Gussow, J.D., (1970). Disadvantaged Children Health, Nutrition, and School Failure. New York: Grune & Stratton.

Brown, R.S., (1993). An Evaluation of the Pilot Joint School Food Programs in the Toronto Board of Education (203). Toronto, Ontario: Research Services Toronto Board of Education.

CSDM. (2006). Commission scolaire de Montreal website. Retrieved from from www.csdm.qc.ca/Csdm/nouvelles/2006/N_2006_04_21_2.asp. Visited November 12, 2006.

Devaney, B., Fraker, T. (1989). The dietary impacts of the school breakfast program. American Journal of Agricultural Economics 71 (4), 932.

Fast Break to Learning School Breakfast Program: A Report of the Fourth Year Results, 2002-2003. (2004, April). Office of Educational Accountability, College of Education and Human Development, University of Minnesota. Retrieved from http://www.education.umn.edu/oea/PDF/2002-03BreakfastStudy.pdf. Visited October 18, 2006.

FRAC. (2006). Food Research & Action Center website. Retrieved from http://www.frac.org. Visited November 22, 2006.

Hyndman, Brian (2000). Feeding the Body, Feeding the Mind: An Overview of School-Based Nutrition Programs in Canada. Breakfast for Learning—Canadian Living Foundation, 11-22.

McIntyre, L., Raine, K., Dayle, J.B., (2001). The Institutionalization of Children’s Feeding Programs in Atlantic Canada. Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research 62 (2), 196-199.

McIntyre, L., Travers, K., Dayle, J.B., (1999). Children’s Feeding Programs in Atlantic Canada: Reducing or Reproducing Inquities? Canadian Journal of Public Health 90 (3), 53-57.

School Breakfast Scorecard 2003: Thirteenth annual status report on the school breakfast program. (2003, November). Food Research and Action Centre. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/. Visited October 18, 2006.

School Breakfast Scorecard 2005: (2005, December). Food Research and Action Centre. Retrieved from http://www.frac.org. Visited November 22, 2006.

Simeon, D.T., McGregor, S.G., (1989). Effects of missing breakfast on the cognitive functions of school children of differing nutritional status. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 49, 646-653.

Williams, P.L., McIntyre, L., Dayle, J.B., Raine, K., (2003). The ‘wonderfulness’ of children’s feeding programs. Health Promotion International 18 (2), 169.

Information was also taken from my interview with Sylvie Beaudry, from the English Montreal School Board’s Cafeteria Services and Nutrition Education Division.

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