Browsing by Author "Kim, Ashley Y."

The Smart Snacks policy was an unforeseen policy that regulated the consumption of competitive foods and beverages at the federal level and imposed a universal standard upon all schools. Particularly due to the universal standard, the effects of the policy are expected to vary significantly across states and school districts, yet limited studies have continuously tracked compliance or examined variations in compliance across different socioeconomic and racial subgroups. Therefore, this thesis focuses on one segment of schools—rural and low income schools—to speculate 1) compliance with the policy and 2) the perceived revenue loss that results from past competitive food and beverage sales, as well as exclusive contracts with vendors that served as a lucrative income stream. To first triangulate compliance, it examines existing literature and past reports of similar state level policies that regulated competitive foods. To predict revenue loss, it examines pouring contracts—the exclusive contracts with vendors that provided significant income prior to Smart Snacks—then evaluates the opposing argument that the reimbursement from federal meal programs suffices to make up for lost revenue. The thesis then employs a quantitative analysis of compliance, using logit models across different variables including the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced price meals, urbanicity, states, regions, and food type (whether the item in question is a food or a beverage) to determine salient trends regarding compliance with Smart Snacks. The range of school traits were expanded in the analytical segment to contextualize the findings more accurately and also uncover the mechanisms driving Smart Snacks compliance—while still preserving the core interest in how rural and low income schools fare under the policy. Ultimately, the study finds that 1) contrary to expectations, rural schools exhibited better compliance than urban schools 2) high eligibility of free and reduced price meals don’t lead to better compliance with Smart Snacks and 3) preexisting strong state and district competitive food and beverage policies, at the regional level, leads to better compliance.