Child Nutrition Education Coordinator, Food Service Department, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, 11355 Perry Road, Houston, TX 77064, USA.
J Sch Health. 2011 May;81(5):239-43. doi: 10.1111/j.1746-1561.2011.00584.x.
Computerized point-of-sale (POS) machine software that allows parents to place restrictions on their child's school meal accounts is available. Parents could restrict specific foods (eg, chips), identify specific days the child can purchase extra foods, or set monetary limits. This descriptive study examines the use of parental restrictions on student cafeteria POS accounts in a convenience sample of 2 school districts.
POS alerts, with student gender, grade, ethnicity, and students' free or reduced-price meal eligibility, were obtained from 2 school food service departments for the 2007-2008 school year. The alerts were coded into 5 categories: financial, medical, restrictions, snacks OK, and extras OK. The distribution of alerts by district, students, and demographics was then tabulated.
District A (4839 students) had more students with alerts (n = 789, 16%) than District B (8510 students; n = 217, 2.6%), and 94 District A students had a second alert. District A parents had to provide written permission for their child to purchase snacks (n = 654, 13.5%) and extra meal items (n = 113, 2.3%). Most alerts were for full-pay students in both districts (74% and 66%) and varied by demographics of the students.
Few parents actually used this system to limit student purchases of foods outside the school meal. Future studies should investigate the influence of these restrictions on student food choices.
现已有能让家长对子女学校餐食账户进行限制的计算机销售点（POS）机软件。家长可以限制特定食物（例如薯片）、规定子女可购买额外食物的特定日期或设定金额限制。本描述性研究以 2 个学区的便利样本调查了家长对学生自助餐厅 POS 账户的限制使用情况。
从 2 个学校食品服务部门获取 2007-2008 学年 POS 警报，其中包含学生性别、年级、族裔以及学生享受免费或减价餐的资格信息。警报被编码为 5 类：财务、医疗、限制、小吃允许和额外食物允许。然后，按区、学生和人口统计数据对警报分布进行制表。
A 区（4839 名学生）的带警报学生（n = 789，16%）多于 B 区（8510 名学生；n = 217，2.6%），94 名 A 区学生有第二个警报。A 区的家长必须书面许可子女购买小吃（n = 654，13.5%）和额外餐食（n = 113，2.3%）。两个区的大多数警报都是针对全价学生（74%和 66%），且因学生人口统计数据而异。
实际上很少有家长真正使用此系统来限制学生购买校外食品。未来的研究应调查这些限制对学生食物选择的影响。
