Document Type

Conference Paper

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

5.3 EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES

Publication Details

Childhood Nutrition and Obesity: current status and future challenges: Symposium 4: Strategies for reducing childhood obesity. Published in Proceedings of the Nutrition Society, 2014.

doi:10.1017/S0029665113003807

Abstract

A pre-school offering a full-day-care service provides for children aged 0-5 years for more than 4 hid. Researchers have called for studies that will provide an understanding of nutrition and physical activity practices in this setting. Obesity prevention in pre-schools, through the development of healthy associations with food and health-related practices, has been advocated. While guidelines for the promotion of best nutrition and health-related practice in the early years' setting exist in a number of jurisdictions, associated regulations have been noted to be poor, with the environment of the child-care facility mainly evaluated for safety. Much cross-sectional research outlines poor nutrition and physical activity practice in this setting. However, there are few published environmental and policy-level interventions targeting the child-care provider with, to our knowledge, no evidence of such interventions in Ireland. The aim of the present paper is to review international guide­ lines and recommendations relating to health promotion best practice in the pre-school setting: service and resource provision; food service and food availability; and the role and involvement of parents in pre-schools. Intervention programmes and assessment tools available to measure such practice are outlined; and insight is provided into an intervention scheme, formulated from available best practice, that was introduced into the Irish full-day­ care pre-school setting.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0029665113003807

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