Biological requirements or social expectations? Entanglements of sex and gender in nutrition policies in Ontario secondary schools

Abstract

Objectives:

An increasing number of nutrition policies have been implemented in Ontario schools as part of a concerted effort to address students’ well-being. This article explores understandings of biological differences in nutrition requirements between young men and women and the extent to which these differences are (re)produced in social eating behaviours and food pedagogies.

Setting:

A suburban school (grades 9–12) located in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area in Ontario, Canada.

Method:

Critical policy analysis combined with 13 focus groups of students (13–18 years old) in one Ontario school. A biopedagogical lens was used to analyse how young people develop and deploy their own reasoning and question the messages they receive about expected behaviour.

Results:

Focus group discussions suggest that dominant discourses and constructions about sex/gender are reproduced within the school environment, which has implications for the effectiveness of nutrition policies in schools. Furthermore, differences between young men and women’s eating behaviours were found to be contradictory to biopedagogical instructions from educational institutions and governmental agencies. For some young people, the pedagogical messages received are limited in their effectiveness because young people have not been convinced that it is worth risking their social status or because their content is contrary to messages received from media or their peers.

Conclusion:

Incorporating student voice in the creation of educational policy will assist health educators and school officials to understand sex/gender influences on the behaviour of students in terms of financial considerations, peer influence and social image. Optimising student voice to understand how they themselves may contribute to the implementation of policies will in turn increase the policies’ effectiveness.

Keywords

Biopedagogy food pedagogies gender health and physical education medicalisation nutrition education sex

Introduction

Recent concern over the health and wellness of Canadian youth has increased pressure and focus on schools to improve the health of young people. Food choices, supply and nutritional guidance have historically been entangled within the school environment. In the early 19th century, health officials advocated for sound nutrition practices and temperance in eating (Gard and Pluim, 2014; Ostry, 2006), while school kitchen classrooms were established for domestic sciences (MacDonald, 1986; Wessell, 2013). More recently, the introduction of school nutrition programmes subtly teaches students about the appropriateness of some foods and the dangers of others (Leahy and Wright, 2016).

In the course of the last century, nutrition has transformed into a science and has been taken up as a means to prevent illness in everyday life (Apple, 1996). As will be discussed in this study, foods that are approved by government agencies to be sold in schools yield disciplinary power to encourage consumption of particular ‘nutritious’ foods and eating behaviours to ward off ill health. Health policy has moved towards regimes of surveillance and accountability in Western society (Evans et al., 2008; Rich and Perhamus, 2010). Educational policy can ‘foster and shape such capacities so that they are enacted in ways that are broadly consistent with particular objectives such as order, civility, health or enterprise’ (Rose, 2000: 323). Schools are pedagogical sites that impose social regulation and give rise to medical imposition (Leahy, 2009; Petherick and Beausoleil, 2016).

Emerging from these risk-based obesity discourses are pedagogies founded in health and regulation. Biopedagogy encompasses the instruction individuals receive about their bodies and lifestyle choices (Wright, 2009). It can be understood as a range of instructions on ‘bios: how to live, how to eat, how much to eat, how to move, how much to move’ (Rich and Evans, 2009: 15). These directives support powerful binaries of biological requirements for men versus women, the medicalisation of food as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, as well as the gendering of food and eating practices as appropriate for men as opposed to women (Zhu et al., 2015).

Schools, through their environments, curricula and daily practices, have an important role to play in producing specific notions of body normality and development through their enforcement of biopedagogies. In their desire to conform to normalised expectations, students are encouraged to consume the instructions to achieve the normalised body they are provided with within the school environment (Wright, 2004). Schools as well as health and physical education practices offer rich sites ‘for examining specific relations between schooling, the body and identity’ (Wright, 2004: 23).

In Canada, provincial governments determine education policy. In Ontario, school nutrition is delivered in the form of provincially legislated policy and curricula which identify the knowledge and skills students are expected to be taught and outline rules or procedures around food choices, distribution and quality within the school environment. These policies are grounded in neoliberal ideas about the use of nutrition to support children’s future health and well-being by providing instructions about appropriate eating behaviour. The most recent of these policies implemented in Ontario is the School Food and Beverage Policy in 2011. This policy established nutritional guidelines and standards for all foods and beverages sold in all schools in the province. Prior to the policy, there were only limitations on sugar-sweetened beverages and foods containing trans fats (Ministry of Education, 2004, 2008).

Many studies have affirmed associations between the school environment and the influence of peers on eating behaviours; few studies have examined Ontario’s school nutrition policies. This article identifies the mechanisms by which biopedagogical instructions are mediated by assumptions and interpretations of sex and gender within nutrition policies in local schools.

Theoretical framework

Young people are influenced by mechanisms of power both inside and outside the school environment. These mechanisms can construct knowledge and magnify discourse through ‘continuous and uninterrupted processes which subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behaviours’ (Foucault, 1980: 97). Biopower is a subtle and underlying power that impels the discourses that influence individuals’ behaviours to manage populations and regulate individuals (Gastaldo, 1997). Mechanisms of biopower include strategies or interventions that target populations in the name of health. Modes of subjectification that are internalised by these mechanisms of power encourage individuals to better themselves under forms of authority and truth discourses (Rabinow and Rose, 2006). In contributing to the subtle and coercive nature of biopower, this disciplinary power works to train or regulate bodies. In so doing, the visibility of bodies subjects them to analysis, criticism and the gaze of others. Consequently, bodies can demonstrate knowledge, be controlled, modified or fall under surveillance.

On the surface, biopower may appear to be in the best interests of humankind because it prevents the demise of the species (Gastaldo, 1997). However, biopower has largely ‘problematized disease as an economic and political problem for societies’ (Lupton, 2003: 33). As populations have increased and become more fluid and complex, the control of the social body has called forth a whole new set of strategies through which regulatory power emerged (Gastaldo, 1997). Mechanisms such as policies and programmes are used to discipline individual citizens and manage wider populations to regulate ‘deviant behaviour’ (Rich and Evans, 2009). Individuals are made responsible for monitoring their own behaviours and making adjustments to meet established guidelines or policies.

Disciplinary and regulatory understandings of biopower are used to inform biopedagogy. Biopedagogies place ‘individuals and populations under surveillance, provide instruction on health risks, oblige citizens to heed particular responsibilities and encourage self-monitoring’ (MacNeill and Rail, 2010: 179). Both directly and indirectly, nutrition policies shape the biopedagogical messages that students receive and to which they respond. Schools work as biopedagogical sites as they ‘have the power to teach, to engage “learners” in meaning making practices that they use to make sense of their worlds and their selves and thereby influence how they act on themselves and others’ (Wright, 2009: 7). These sites are not only limited to schools, however, but also include advertising and public health campaigns, as well as government-issued health guidelines and policies (Flowers and Swan, 2018; Rich, 2011b). What are missing and explored in this article are the biopedagogical messages received by individuals and how sites that promote them have inextricable links to sex/gender or cell/society.

Methods

Setting and participants

The research was conducted in a suburban school (grades 9–12) located in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area. The school was located in a neighbourhood with most students self-identifying as middle to upper middle class. The majority of students were Caucasian, and all the participants were born in Canada. The school requires no fees, payment or tests to attend. All students in the school were invited to participate through classroom visits.

Policy analysis

A critical policy analysis of key Ontario Ministry of Education documents related to school nutrition policy was undertaken. These documents included Ontario PPM 150 School Food and Beverage Policy (Ministry of Education, 2010), Healthy Food for Healthy Schools Act (Ministry of Education, 2008) and Trans Fat Regulation (Ministry of Education, 2008). The policy analysis was used to put participants’ statements into context. Policies were coded using key concepts from participants’ narratives and from theory in the relevant literature.

Focus groups

All students (n = 1100) were invited to participate: 83 students agreed to do so (28 young men and 55 young women), ranging in age from 13 to 18 years old. The composition of the focus groups varied (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Focus group composition.

Focus group	Young women	Young men
1	–	3
2	5	4
3	2	3
4	8	–
5	1	5
6	3	2
7	7	–
8	6	–
9	–	3
10	4	8
11	3	–
12	6	–
13	10	–
Total	55	28

Focus groups lasted between 30 and 60 minutes and took place during the school day in a private room at the school. They were conducted until all students who wanted to participate had been given the opportunity to do so. Focus groups were recorded and transcribed. Questions asked, along with participants’ comments, have been included verbatim as evidence of the findings.

Data analysis

An ethnomethodological approach was used to devise focus group questions and inform the coding of nutritional policies, while a feminist approach allowed for careful consideration of the power dynamics present in a focus group setting. Focus groups were employed because they provided students with an opportunity to collectively discuss their experiences and reflect on (dis)similarities. Focus groups also provide students with a voice, which is sometimes lost or forgotten in educational institutions (Gray, 2015).

The coding of the transcripts was undertaken using a biopedagogical lens, informed by feminist epistemologies and physical cultural studies. Open coding of transcripts was used while in the process of data collection/construction. These open codes were associated with the experiences, behaviours, knowledge and interactions within the school environment. Detailed coding emerged after a discourse analysis of the data had first been conducted following transcription. The codes can be understood as dominant themes, which are important for an understanding of the development and deployment of young people’s practical reasoning surrounding sex/gender differences in eating behaviours.

Ethics

Ethics approval for the study was obtained from the University of Toronto as well as the participating school board. Parental consent was required. All interested students were provided with ethics documentation, and those who returned the forms signed up for a focus group time.

Findings and discussion

The Ontario School Food and Beverage Policy (Ministry of Education, 2010) identifies nutrient levels for all products sold on school property. Although not explicitly stated, the policy attempts to regulate the types of foods in the school environment in an effort to encourage healthy eating habits and to create healthy biocitizens. Foods permitted within the school environment must not exceed certain limits for micro- and macronutrients such as salt, sugar or fat. These restrictions on the food served in the school environment impact the experience of students in terms of finance, interactions with peers and social image concerns.

Perceived differences in nutrient requirements

The School Food and Beverage Policy reduces food to its individual components, which serve a particular bodily purpose. As suggested by Apple (1996), nutrition has become a scientific discipline in which individual components of food become medicalised, whereby ‘non medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems usually in terms of illness or disorders’ (Conrad, 1992: 209). Scientifically ascribing health and risk to food has created discourses that increasingly medicalise food, placing importance on individual components rather than foods as a whole (Welch et al., 2012). In consequence, individuals are made responsible for monitoring, regulating and disciplining their bodies to ensure they are consuming appropriate nutrients as established by governmental agencies (Leahy et al., 2016).

In updated guidelines, Health Canada does not provide a specific protein requirement because most Canadians adequately meet protein needs (Health Canada, 2019). Prior to these changes, guidelines for adolescents were based on physical size rather than sex. Increased consumption for those participating in sports is not required (American College of Sports Medicine et al., 2000). Despite this, young men receive biopedagogical messages from the media, suggesting they require more protein than young women due to their biological differences in physical size and amount of muscle mass (Field et al., 2005). This incorrect information was given a lot of weight by participants in this study:

Focus Group 2

Question:

Are there differences in the types of foods that young men and women eat?

Brittany:

Guys naturally have more muscle, so they need to eat more protein.

Audrey:

Guys keep those massive things of protein powder in their locker to build muscle. They bring those protein shakes to class with them.

Brian:

There’s like guys that go to the gym a lot and will have protein shakes after.

Question:

Why do young men drink protein shakes at school, but young women don’t?

Robert:

I usually have a protein shake after a workout. It helps my muscles.

Jeff:

I read online it is something you should do after a workout.

Victoria:

We don’t need it to build muscle or anything. Guys are supposed to be the ones that are like stronger . . . girls are supposed to be like feminine and not have like giant biceps.

Laura:

If I had like big arms, I just wouldn’t want them to be bigger than some guys because that brings in a whole new reason for them to make fun of you.

Adam:

Girls don’t need them. Guys lift weights and girls are on the cardio machines.

Sue:

’Cause we’re not expected to.

The assumption that young men require more protein than young women without consideration of body size or overall muscle mass had a serious impact on the behaviours of young men. Participants’ comments suggest the eating behaviours of young men in this school reflect deeply held truths that boys’ diets should contain large amounts of protein to meet assumed ‘biological requirements’ relating to muscle mass. This assumption was held by most of the young men in focus groups, regardless of differences in physical size (height or body mass). Biological assumptions clearly mediated young men’s social behaviours with respect to food and beverage consumption. The primary consumers of protein shakes were young men involved in athletics, supporting the masculine image portrayed in the media. Over time, the consumption of protein shakes has become entwined with athletic social status. The ‘shake’ has become representative of young men’s social capital and masculinity within school sports culture and reinforced behaviour to carry protein shakes to class, store containers of the powder in lockers and compare strategies of consumption.

Young men in this study had received and reproduced messages from the media, that consuming protein-rich foods is a ‘necessity’ after a workout to assist in building muscle. Foods containing protein have been medicalised by the food industry and media, as a requirement for young men to develop a muscular body and affirm masculinity. As a mode of ‘public pedagogy’ (Flowers and Swan, 2018; Giroux, 2004; Rich, 2011a), websites and magazines instruct and (re)produce knowledge about normative relationships between young people, their bodies and food (Wright and Halse, 2014). This misleads young men into thinking this is a biological requirement for their bodies, but in reality may reinforce gendered ideas about the youthful masculine identity that is normalised in health and fitness media and other forms of public pedagogy.

In contrast to the above, young women did not engage in the behaviour of consuming large quantities of protein because they did not feel it was needed to support their physical stature or activity. Young women’s primary form of exercise was described as cardiovascular for slimming their body mass rather than building muscle. In women’s magazines, the focus of protein consumption tends to be associated with dieting strategies, whereas in men’s magazines, protein consumption is for muscle gain (Cook et al., 2014). This public pedagogy reinforces core messages that young women should conscientiously and deliberately make food and exercise choices to maintain their slender figures (Rich and Evans, 2005). The focus group participants experienced pressure to consume particular foods based on their understanding of biological needs, but this could be contradictory to the social pressure to fit in.

Financial considerations

The implementation of the School Food and Beverage Policy required cafeterias to change their menus to accommodate the new nutrition requirements. This has resulted in decreased school cafeteria sales because cafeterias are unable to meet requirements for an affordable price and quantity that is attractive to students. Most focus group participants spoke about leaving school to purchase food, which was determined to be a more affordable option:

Focus Group 2

Question:

Has the new nutrition policy changed what you purchase at the cafeteria?

Audrey:

I liked their fruit salads, I used to get them but now they’re like $6.00.

Victoria:

If you go to Tim’s [Tim Hortons, a Canadian fast food chain] you can get something so much cheaper.

Robert:

Like you can get a box of pizza [outside of school] for like the same price as like getting a slice here. It’s cheaper and better so what’s the point of staying here.

Brian:

Rib on a bun used to be like a foot. Now it’s down to like five and a half inches and it’s gone up like a dollar and a half and you’re like I can’t afford this.

In an effort to conform to the nutrition standards outlined in the School Food and Beverage Policy, the types of food offered in the cafeteria and their portions have changed. The young men’s actions to eat large quantities of food are counter to the surveillance and regulatory forces of biopower because they are not expected to regulate their food consumption. Conflicting biopedagogies from peers which celebrate having large appetites and finishing the food in front of them act on the young men in contradiction to regulating calorie consumption to maintain health given by government agencies. The medicalisation of cafeteria food to meet government-imposed limits requires the cafeteria to use more expensive ingredients, purchase more expensive foods or decrease portion size. Although the food within the cafeteria may be considered more nutritious by government health standards, the price of the food is of greater importance to students, which results in many choosing to eat off campus where a higher quantity of food can be purchased at a lower price.

The decrease in portion size accompanied with an increase in cost is more financially and culturally impactful on young men. All participants described the core biological assumption that all young men need to consume more calories compared to young women due to physical size and activity differences. However, daily caloric intake of a person is dependent on an individual’s weight, height, age and sex, as well as levels of daily physical activity (Health Canada, 2006). A related cultural message is that a hearty appetite and large physical size are desirable traits in young men but not in young women (Kilbourne, 2003). Young women in this study also reproduced biopedagogical messages that regulate and discipline their bodies by limiting portion size. As a result, cost of the food may not have the same impact on them:

Focus Group 5

Question:

Has someone or something impact your food choices?

Bennett:

I will go home sometimes and eat 12 eggs. It’s too expensive to do it here.

Ann:

Boys metabolism isn’t the same as girls. So, they eat a whole pizza and you’re eating too, you know it’s a lot for you but for them, they don’t think anything of it.

William:

Girls tend to be smaller in figure, so I have read that their food intake and calorie intake needs to be lower. Guys are naturally bigger, so they need to eat more.

Jacob:

Matt will come back on Friday after lunch and say like I just ate ‘x’ number of hotdogs with ‘x’ numbers of guys and it was two bucks.

Matt:

Maybe this is just like a football team thing, but Chris was like I had two burritos yesterday. Like that sounds like that’s an accomplishment. I was proud of him.

Andrew:

There are times we’ll chirp each other for not finishing our food.

When eating in front of others, young men described consuming large quantities of food and bragging about it, as a part of being a man. Cavazza et al. (2015) found the types of foods and the amount of food consumed are associated with gender norms and, when disentangled, still independently contribute to gender. Young men’s lack of concern about restricting their eating behaviours is contradictory to obesity discourses that encourage caloric restraint. There are no moral repercussions for their failings as biocitizens to limit their caloric intake. Rather, these behaviours are embraced and encouraged. Eating as much food as cheaply as possible was a desired and reinforced behaviour to reaffirm the young men’s masculinity.

With the implementation of the School Food and Beverage Policy, there has been a financial strain on young men, who expressed concern about the financial cost of food in the cafeteria because the pressure (an unacknowledged gender imperative) to consume large quantities of food had become too expensive. Young women, in contrast, were not as bothered by the cafeteria food cost because their gender imperative encouraged them to self-monitor their bodies and restrict food quantity in line with the school’s culture of slenderness. To engage in ‘masculine’ eating behaviours, young men often left the school environment for food establishments that provided large quantities of food at a low price. The cafeteria did not provide affordable opportunities for young men, thereby resulting in a largely female-oriented cafeteria culture.

Social image and the influence of peers

Young people inhabit appearance cultures governed by norms and expectations within schools. The food young people eat, the manner in which they eat and their appearance can be observed by others and used to evaluate an individual’s worth and whether or not he or she fits in (Stead et al., 2011). Body weight and appearance contribute to social status in adolescence. Young men and women may consume certain types of foods, based on biological assumptions which uphold their social image and reflect deeply held views about healthy weight and eating behaviours (McPhail, 2013; Stead et al., 2011). In the focus groups, young women addressed the presence of peers on eating behaviours as follows:

Focus Group 7

Question:

Is there anything different about how young women and young men eat?

Katrina:

A guy can be less conscious about what he eats. If he’s trying to eat right, he’ll still eat a lot because he can, it won’t affect him . . . girls are a lot more cautious about what they eat. Girls don’t need as much.

Jenn:

A lot of guys can eat so much and be so skinny. There’s like girls that can eat so little and not be skinny.

Question:

Do you eat differently when you are around young men or young women?

Jenn:

I eat less of it and not like a slob so they [young men] don’t judge me.

Katrina:

When I’m with other girls, I’m less restrained on how much I eat and what I eat.

Alison:

There’s like certain friends that like judge you so harsh and then there’s some just like okay whatever.

Question:

Do you go with your friends to the cafeteria?

Amanda:

We go to the cafeteria and we all stand in line and like talk.

Allison:

If somebody says something and you like it, oh I’m going to go there too. A lot of people tend to do that.

Question:

Does going to the cafeteria with friends impact your food choices?

Jenn:

Let’s say if Hannah and Katie go to the cafeteria, they’ll both come upstairs with the same thing.

Both male and female participants suggested that to retain a smaller figure, young women should not consume as many calories because they are ‘biologically smaller’. When eating in front of young men, young women were consciously aware of the evaluative gaze of their male peers and were concerned about judgement. As a result, eating becomes a private or secretive activity for young women to avoid the surveillance and evaluative gaze of others, especially when food choices may not be considered healthy. Young women who challenge ‘healthy eating’ discourses risk being labelled poor biocitizens because of their unwillingness to fall in place with disciplining and monitoring their foods choices and subsequently their bodies.

By assigning status to the type of food or the amount of food consumed, food pedagogies can contribute to social inclusion or exclusion among peers (Flowers and Swan, 2018). Status associated with the consumption (or avoidance) of particular food items carries moral overtones that define an individual’s value and character based on their eating behaviour. The assumption that all young women do not biologically need to consume as many calories, or should be smaller in size, impacts the young women’s eating habits. Young women in this study commented on the influence of others on their food selection and amount of food consumed. They were uncomfortable eating in front of unfamiliar peers for fear of judgement for their moral imperfections, failure to be responsible for the monitoring and regulating one’s own health by choosing ‘healthy’ foods or disciplining the body by limiting their food portions. When eating with other young women, focus group participants suggested they were less self-restrictive in the types and amount of food they consumed because they did not risk losing too much social capital by breaking moral imperatives to limit caloric intake. However, the amount of restraint young women exercised over their eating habits was dependent on the degree of friendship. When in the presence of unfamiliar peers, young women suggested they felt judged and tried to negotiate their place within the school and social environment. When surrounded by their close girlfriends, young women did not feel so judged by their actions. They worried less about social consequences of their ‘moral indiscretion’ as biocitizens because they knew their position was secure within their all-female peer group. Engaging in the indiscretion with others made the young women more comfortable about their ‘moral shortcomings’ because they were not alone. ‘Safety in numbers’ by being part of a group helped them avoid some criticism and surveillance of individual eating behaviours.

Young men also experience social pressure concerning the type of food they should or should not consume. The introduction of the School Food and Beverage Policy has required the replacement of regular soft drinks with diet soft drinks in school. Although this change meets governmental regulations to assist young people in monitoring and regulating their bodies, it was not received well by young men in this study because consuming diet beverages threatened their masculine image. ‘Real men’ cannot be seen consuming diet drink because they do not need to restrict their calories:

Focus Group 1

Question:

Have the changes in the cafeteria impacted your eating behaviours?

Michael:

A lot of people don’t like diet drinks . . . the word ‘diet’ in a drink turns a lot of guys off. That’s why they put out ‘Coke Zero’ because guys won’t drink the other stuff especially in front of other guys.

Patrick:

It doesn’t stop me . . . I don’t worry about the calories.

Brad:

I can’t buy some stuff here but like we have a plaza right there so you just can go buy whatever you want.

Importantly, young men in the focus group did not feel the need to regulate their calorie consumption or body weight by restricting the types of beverages they consumed. Traditional Western male physique ideals of being ‘big and strong’ (Norman, 2011) negate the wish to consume diet drinks. As an effort to change the dietary behaviour of young men, the strategy of eliminating sugar-sweetened beverages may be limited in its effectiveness. Young men in this study did not feel the same evaluative gaze and surveillance, as did the young women.

Current policy suggests the government does not trust young people to self-monitor, regulate and discipline their bodies, so a driving premise of the School Food and Beverage Policy has been to establish a school environment that encourages students to purchase healthy food in line with Canada’s Food Guide for nutrient content. In the school studied, this approach has been largely ineffective since students leave the school environment to purchase food that meets their preferences and eating desires. While removing specific types of food may prevent students from buying these foods on school property, it does not have a major impact on behaviour. Students can still purchase the items from neighbourhood establishments or bring them from home. Changing the food available in the school cafeteria does not have lasting impact on students as good biocitizens because dominant biological assumptions about men’s and women’s bodily needs and the influence of social pressure undermine the strategy.

Conclusion

School Food and Beverage Policy outlines the nutrient requirement of all food sold in schools in Ontario, but the policy writers failed to consider the gendered biological assumptions held by students and the broader social issues that impact nutrient requirements, access due to limited finance, concerns over social image, personal food preferences and limited types of foods offered. Lack of consideration of these issues has decreased the effectiveness of the policy and failed to gain ‘buy-in’ from students. Because available foods in school do not align with perceived biological and social needs, many students look elsewhere. Attempts by the policy to encourage students to self-monitor, regulate and discipline their bodies remain limited in their effectiveness because young people have not been convinced that doing so is worth risking their social status. Moreover, for some, the advice they receive concerning diet is contrary to other pedagogical messages encountered in fitness/health media and among their peers.

Students in this study felt they did not have any input in this policy. In future policy development, student voices should be sought, listened to and incorporated. This will help assist health educators and school officials better understand the impact of biological assumptions, such as caloric or nutrient intake, and social and cultural influences, such as peers and media, on young people’s nutrition knowledge and eating behaviours. Ultimately, students live within bodies that are concurrently sexed and gendered. Lack of consideration for the gendered dynamics of food consumption hinders the effectiveness of a school nutrition policy. Young people’s eating behaviours in this study were not significantly impacted by policy change because students were able to locate sources to meet their needs outside the school.

Throughout this study, the close entanglement of sex/gender with cell/society was evident in discussion with the young people. Moving forward, engagement with young people and providing accurate information about biological needs as well as discussion about social influences can assist students in gaining knowledge and skills to make more informed decisions concerning their eating behaviour and the factors influencing it.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Sarah Gray

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