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Observation and assessment of the nutritional quality of ‘out of school’ foods popular with secondary school pupils at lunchtime

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Public Health, November 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (92nd percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (81st percentile)

Mentioned by

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1 news outlet
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23 X users
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1 Facebook page

Citations

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6 Dimensions

Readers on

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111 Mendeley
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Title
Observation and assessment of the nutritional quality of ‘out of school’ foods popular with secondary school pupils at lunchtime
Published in
BMC Public Health, November 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12889-017-4900-9
Pubmed ID
Authors

Fiona Crawford, Dionne Mackison, John D. Mooney, Anne Ellaway

Abstract

The contemporary Scottish diet is unhealthy and a risk factor for poor health outcomes including obesity. Over a third of Scottish children are at risk of being overweight or obese, and there have been calls to strengthen the evidence base on the role of the food retail environment around schools in influencing the consumption of unhealthy foods. We examined the food retail environment around five secondary schools in Glasgow city, Scotland. Trained fieldworkers observed the food purchasing behaviour of school pupils in local shops. Samples of the most popular foods were subsequently purchased by the research team and assessed for nutritional content, including energy, total and saturated fat, and salt. This was compared with the nutrient standards for school lunches established by the Scottish Government. There was marked variation in the number of outlets identified within a 10 min walk from each school, ranging from five in the area with the lowest number of outlets to thirty in the area with the highest number of outlets. Outlets identified were heterogeneous and included fish and chip shops, kebab shops, convenience stores, newsagents, bakeries, mobile catering units, cafés, pizzerias, sandwich shops and supermarkets. Lunchtime offers and other marketing strategies targeting school pupils were observed at most outlets. Nutritional analysis of the 45 savoury food items purchased was conducted by laboratory staff. Of the foods analysed, 49% of the samples exceeded recommended calorie intake, 58% exceeded total fat recommendations and 64% exceeded saturated fat recommendations, 42% exceeded recommended salt levels. Over 80% of the 45 food items sampled did not comply with one of more of the nutrient standards for fat, saturated fat and salt. Meal deals and promotions of unhealthy foods aimed at pupils were widely available. The majority of pupils purchased unhealthy convenience food of poor nutritional value at lunchtime in local shops around their school. Further effort is required to implement regulatory levers such as taxation on unhealthy foods, restriction on the concentration of outlets selling unhealthy foods as well as the development of partnerships and additional measures within and beyond schools to promote healthy foods.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 23 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 111 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 111 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 18 16%
Student > Bachelor 15 14%
Student > Ph. D. Student 13 12%
Researcher 6 5%
Student > Postgraduate 6 5%
Other 18 16%
Unknown 35 32%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Nursing and Health Professions 18 16%
Medicine and Dentistry 14 13%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 7 6%
Psychology 6 5%
Economics, Econometrics and Finance 4 4%
Other 20 18%
Unknown 42 38%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 25. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 February 2018.
All research outputs
#1,367,068
of 23,544,633 outputs
Outputs from BMC Public Health
#1,464
of 15,274 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#31,834
of 434,435 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Public Health
#30
of 161 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,544,633 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 94th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 15,274 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.1. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 434,435 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 161 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its contemporaries.