The new study published in journal Sociology of Education was produced from a review of data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study by Jennifer Van Hook, professor of sociology and demography at Pennsylvania State University, and her colleague Claire Altman. Van Hook and Altman found that in the subsample of 19,450 children grades fifth through eight, more than 59 percent of fifth graders and 86.3 percent of eighth graders attended schools where junk food was sold. According to the press release, while there was a significant percentage of students attending schools where junk food was sold, there was not a disproportionate number of students considered obese or overweight in these schools compared to institutions where junk food was absent.
“There has been a great deal of focus in the media on how schools make a lot of money from the sale of junk food to students, and on how schools have the ability to help reduce childhood obesity,” Van Hook said in the release. “In that light, we expected to find a definitive connection between the sale of junk food in middle schools and weight gain among children between fifth and eighth grades. But, our study suggests that — when it comes to weight issues — we need to be looking far beyond schools and, more specifically, junk food sales in schools, to make a difference.”
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Van Hook said that the findings surprised the researchers so much that they held off publishing for nearly two years “because we kept looking for a connection that just wasn’t there.”
