Parents and carers of Lake Macquarie school children will have a helping hand in the kitchen to create healthier lunch boxes, thanks to an app developed through a University of Newcastle research project.
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Researchers have developed Swap What’s Packed in the lunchbox: SWAP-It, a parent support program delivered through an app.
Lead researcher, Associate Professor Luke Wolfenden, said SWAP-It aimed to align the nutritional intake of children with dietary guidelines and prevent unhealthy weight gain in childhood.
“Good nutrition is one of the most important determinants of children’s health and wellbeing,” Associate Professor Wolfenden said.
“Within the Hunter New England region, more than 135,000 lunchboxes are packed for primary-aged school children every day.
“These lunchboxes provide the fuel for young growing minds, containing a third of their daily intake.”
But he said all was not as it seemed.
“Packed within these lunchboxes are more than 270,000 items of junk food, cleverly packaged and presented to children to be consumed each day,” he said.
“The consumption of these foods is contributing to excessive energy intake, unhealthy weight gain, diabetes and other health issues that impact on children’s physical and mental health and can lead to chronic health conditions in adulthood.”
Research shows dietary behaviours in childhood track into adulthood and are predictive of weight gain and future chronic disease.
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To address the limitations of previous tactics to improve lunchbox content, the research team established a partnership with leading national provider of a school-parent communication app - ‘Skoolbag’ - to develop and integrate the lunchbox program within the app.
The SWAP-It program is a technological solution to the challenge of reaching, engaging and changing the behaviours of parents.
“We see the SWAP-It program as a means to support parents to pack healthy nutritious foods in their child’s lunchbox on a daily basis, and therefore supporting children to play, learn and thrive at school,” Associate Professor Wolfenden said.
The program includes three components: SWAP-It nutrition guidelines; weekly support messages via push notifications; and resources such as hyperlinks to useful information, lunchbox planners, drink bottles, ice bricks and shopping lists as visual prompts to pack healthy lunchbox foods at home.
“The primary SWAP-It message to parents is to SWAP in healthy foods and SWAP out less healthy foods in the lunchbox – every day,” Associate Professor Wolfenden said.
SWAP-It will be delivered to 150 primary schools across the Hunter New England region, benefitting about 75,000 students and 60,000 families over three years.
The support program proposed for the Hunter New England region has the potential to improve the nutritional content of up to 75,000 lunch/snacks each day. That’s 15 million per year.
“Swapping just one non-core snack with an everyday snack item will, on average, decrease the calories within the lunchbox by up to 220kj, averting future weight gain among children,” Associate Professor Wolfenden said.
The program has been funded through funded through a $500,000 grant from nib foundation.
The foundation’s director, Michelle McPherson, said with obesity posing a significant health and social burden estimated to cost our country $58 billion per year, and 27 per cent of Australian children now classified as obese or overweight, there was an imperative to improve the food habits of the next generation.
“Implementing a widely accessible program that prevents unhealthy weight gain from occurring in the first place is recommended as one of the most cost effective approaches to improving community health and wellbeing,” Mrs McPherson said.
“We believe the SWAP-It program has the potential to do exactly that, by harnessing the power of an existing technology to provide an accessible and low-cost solution to engage a large number of families in a conversation about the benefits of a healthy lunchbox for their children.”
