Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Nutrients

Publisher

MDPI

School

School of Medical and Health Sciences

RAS ID

31437

Funders

Edith Cowan University - Open Access Support Scheme 2020

Comments

Sambell, R., Wallace, R., Lo, J., Costello, L., & Devine, A. (2020). Increasing food expenditure in long daycare by an extra $0.50 per child/day would improve core food group provision. Nutrients, 12(4), Article 968.

https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12040968

Abstract

Early childhood education and care services are a significant feature of Australian family life, where nearly 1.4 million children attended a service in 2019. This paper reports on the cost of food provided to children in long day-care (LDC) services and extrapolates expenditure recommendations to support food provision compliance. A cross-sectional audit of LDC services in metropolitan Perth was conducted to determine food group provision by weighing raw ingredients of meal preparation—morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea (MT, L, AT). Ingredients were costed at 2017 online metropolitan pricing from a large supermarket chain. Across participating services, 2 days of food expenditure per child/day ranged between $1.17 and $4.03 across MT, L, AT, and averaged $2.00 per child/day. Multivariable analysis suggests that an increase of $0.50 per child/day increases the odds of a LDC service meeting > 50% of Australian Dietary Guideline (ADG) recommendations across ≥ 4 core food groups by fourfold (p = 0.03). Given the fact that the literature regarding food expenditure at LDC services is limited, this study provides information about food expenditure variation that impacts planning and provision of nutritionally balanced menus recommended for children. An average increase of food expenditure of $0.50 per child/day would increase food provision compliance.

DOI

10.3390/nu12040968

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.3390/nu12040968