Cultivating School Food Community: An Ethnography on Nutritional Wellbeing in a Calgary Public School

The nutritional health of Canadian children has declined over the last 30 years. Public health campaigns and health education programs have been developed to address increased rates of obesity and overweight in young people. Schools are popular sites for health education programming in this regard. Although policies and initiatives have been used to improve student nutritional health, low-nutritional value foods (LNVFs) continue to proliferate in the school food environment (SFE). Critical Medical Anthropology (CMA) considers the social, political, economic, and environmental factors that interact with the body to impact overall health and may help shed light on why young people continue to consume LNVFs in school. CMA is both a theory and practice that can be used for improving health and wellbeing in communities. This thesis utilized CMA in an ethnography at a school in Calgary to better understand what factors influence food choice among students. Interviews, group discussions and participant observation were conducted between January 2015 and June 2015. Through collaborative initiatives including a garbology study and a cookbook project, students, teachers and researcher uncovered valuable information to help inform future food programming in schools.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Anthropology

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Arts

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Cottle, Tamara

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hayashi, Naotaka

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Smart, Alan
• Elliott, Charlene
• ell

• critical medical anthropology
• ethnography
• garbology
• school food environment

Statement dc:rights

• University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/35746

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ucalgary.scholaris.ca:1880/109487