Teachers' Experience and Perspectives of Traditional Breakfast and Breakfast in the Classroom.
OBJECTIVE
To understand teachers' perceptions about Breakfast in the Classroom and traditional breakfast.


DESIGN
An electronic survey was sent to teachers across the state of Utah. Teachers responded to an open-ended question exploring what they liked and/or disliked about Breakfast in the Classroom and traditional breakfast.


SETTING
Schools across the state of Utah.


PARTICIPANTS
Kindergarten through grade 12 teachers who were members of the Utah Education Association.


PHENOMENON OF INTEREST
Teachers' opinions regarding Breakfast in the Classroom and traditional school breakfast ANALYSIS: Researchers independently coded all responses and then grouped codes into themes. Themes were reviewed recursively over time.


RESULTS
The 3 overarching themes were food and nutrition, administration of school breakfast, and student outcomes. Aspects most commonly disliked were the nutrition or quality of food, the mess created, the time required, coordination and logistical issues, behavioral issues, and waste. Aspects most commonly liked were breakfast being available to all students, students being fed or not hungry, coordination and logistics, and student learning and academics.


CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
Teachers liked and disliked aspects of Breakfast in the Classroom and traditional breakfast. Schools could potentially increase efforts to garner support and feedback from teachers to create buy-in and identify best practices. Future research could focus on identifying the effect that the School Breakfast Program model has on teachers' perceptions as well as confirming results with a larger and more diverse population.
A pilot study to expand the school breakfast program in one middle school
ABSTRACTSchool Breakfast Program (SBP) eaters weigh less and have healthier diets than nonSBP eaters. However, SBP is underused nationally, especially among low income youth. To explore the feasibility of expanding access to the SBP to improve participation among sixth grade students in one middle school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A grab-n-go SBP menu, hallway delivery service and in-classroom eating strategies were implemented and evaluated with a cohort of sixth grade students (n = 239) for 6 weeks during spring 2010. Process measures were collected from students and teachers and through direct observations. The school district provided objective SBP participation data at baseline and post intervention. Students were very satisfied with eating in the classrooms (64%). Teachers (n = 10) rated eating in the classroom as not messy, not disruptive and student behavior as excellent or good (100%). There was a significant increase in SBP participation from 0.74 days per week to 1.21 days per week (p < 0.0001). Improvements were more pronounced among students eligible for free and reduced priced school meals. A school environment that supports convenient SBP menu and serving and eating locations was feasible and increased SBP participation in this suburban middle school.
Continued promise of school breakfast programs for improving academic outcomes : breakfast is still the most important meal of the day.
A groundbreaking study, 1 published in this journal nearly 25 years ago, documented improved academic outcomes among low-income schoolchildren who received school breakfast via the School Breakfast Program (SBP) vs those who did not, including significantly decreased tardiness and absences and improved performance on standardized tests of academic achievement. Since that time, the empirical study of school breakfast initiatives has increased substantially, with several literature reviews 2-4 documenting the importance of breakfast for a variety of health and academic outcomes. In this issue, Anzman-Frasca and colleagues 5 at Tufts University provide even more evidence about the importance of school breakfasts. Their study used a large sample of elementary schools to examine outcomes of a Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) intervention as a strategy to increase participation in the SBP and several key academic outcomes. They found that the BIC intervention significantly improved rates of participation in the SBP and student attendance. Although Anzman-Frasca and colleagues did not replicate previous findings that breakfast improved academic achievement, this should not be interpreted as a lack of benefit for breakfast programs. Indeed, a recent comprehensive review 2 found that 21 prior studies—many of which used highquality experimental designs to evaluate breakfast interventions—reported that consumption of breakfast can significantly improve students’ performance on standardized tests of mathematics and reading. Most important, these effects appear to be most reliable for habitual breakfast consumption, and breakfast interventions appear to require at least 1 month, but generally durations of several