Poor compliance with school food environment guidelines in elementary schools in Northwest Mexico: A cross-sectional study

Yazmín Hugues; Rolando G. Díaz-Zavala; Trinidad Quizán-Plata; Camila Corvalán; Michelle M. Haby

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0259720

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionDecember 18, 2020
29 Mar 2021 Decision Letter - Shihe Fu, Editor PONE-D-20-39852 Poor compliance with school food environment guidelines in elementary schools in Northwest Mexico: a cross-sectional study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Haby, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Both the qualified reviewers provided comments but their recommendations are opposite. Reviewer 1 recommended rejection because your paper is a policy report not a research article, while Reviewer 2 recommended acceptance. I have read your paper carefully and I agree with Reviewer 1 that your method is very simple and descriptive. However, your research design, method, and findings did answer the question you aim to study: what % of schools that implemented the policy or complied with the policy. In this sense, I think your research has met the requirement of PLOS ONE publication criteria. Therefore, I invite you to revise your paper based on Reviewer 1’s comments. You don’t have to follow all the suggestions as some of them require data or work beyond your current survey design; try to address those concerns as much as you can. Please submit your revised manuscript by May 13 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. 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The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. 3. Please provide additional details regarding participant consent. 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YHA received a Master’s 575degree scholarship from CONACYT (National Council of Science and Technology.] We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: [The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.] Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 6. Your ethics statement should only appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please delete it from any other section. 7. Please include captions for all your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Referee report for Manuscript “PONE-D-20-39852” This paper, entitled “Poor compliance with school food environment guidelines in elementary schools in Northwest Mexico: a cross-sectional study”, reports a survey result. The survey is conducted to collect data on the implementation of Federal Government guideline for the sale and distribution of food and beverage (AGREEMENT) in the context of high overweight and obese prevalence in Mexican. While the paper raises important questions, it has the following flaws: 1. it is a report, not a research article. It only reports the very low rate of compliance rates without analyzing the behind reasons. It could be extended, for example, by analyzing the spillover effect of mobile food vendors on the street on the provision of unhealthy (sugar-sweetened beverages) foods of public schools, or by examining the difference between public and private schools. Another way to extend it is to examine why government seems use secondary document, rather than the AGREEMENT, to inspect schools. Are there any corruptions? 2. The contribution of this paper to literature is quite limited. This paper brings us updated survey results, with findings similar to the previous literature. Reviewer #2: Using a random sample of schools in Hermosillo, Sonora, this study shows the poor compliance of 2014 AGREEMENT, which establishes the general guidelines for the sale and distribution of foods and beverages in schools in Mexico. Rather than relying on self-reported data, this study uses direct observation of the school canteens and school yard to measure compliance. These measures are performed to a high technical standard. The study further discusses the barriers and facilitators to implementation of the AGREEMENT in detail. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259720.r001
Revision 1
13 May 2021 Author Response Response to reviewer comments: Our responses follow each comment. Reviewer #1: Referee report for Manuscript “PONE-D-20-39852” This paper, entitled “Poor compliance with school food environment guidelines in elementary schools in Northwest Mexico: a cross-sectional study”, reports a survey result. The survey is conducted to collect data on the implementation of Federal Government guideline for the sale and distribution of food and beverage (AGREEMENT) in the context of high overweight and obese prevalence in Mexican. While the paper raises important questions, it has the following flaws: 1. it is a report, not a research article. It only reports the very low rate of compliance rates without analyzing the behind reasons. It could be extended, for example, by analyzing the spillover effect of mobile food vendors on the street on the provision of unhealthy (sugar-sweetened beverages) foods of public schools, or by examining the difference between public and private schools. Another way to extend it is to examine why government seems use secondary document, rather than the AGREEMENT, to inspect schools. Are there any corruptions? Response: We disagree with the reviewer on this aspect. While the study is a descriptive cross-sectional study this is a valid epidemiological research design, and the study offers important and high-quality results (as noted by reviewer #2). This is the first study of a large, random sample of schools in Mexico, that has used direct observation of the school canteens and school yard to measure compliance rather than relying on self-reported data (which is more likely to lead to an overestimation of compliance). The observation method used followed a standardized protocol, is replicable and valid and therefore provides the opportunity to monitor progress. It was also a necessary first step to show that compliance was low and to highlight possible reasons for this, such as lack of training of the school authorities. Further, while the objective of the study was not to analyze the reasons for low compliance, the discussion raises several potential explanations that may serve as hypotheses for future studies. 2. The contribution of this paper to literature is quite limited. This paper brings us updated survey results, with findings similar to the previous literature. Response: We disagree that the findings are similar to the previous literature. The findings from this study, using direct observation, are much lower than previous studies in Mexico that used self-report. And, as mentioned in point 2, it will serve to show that there is indeed a problem with the implementation of the guidelines so that steps can be taken to improve both the guidelines themselves and their implementation. An additional strength of this type of study is that, the monitoring of food environments can help drive increased accountability of governments and the private sector and stimulate policy changes to improve them (Sacks et al. 2021). A comment has been added to the discussion (page 26) to this effect. Sacks G, Kwon J, Vandevijvere S, Swinburn B. Benchmarking as a public health strategy for creating healthy food environments: an evaluation of the INFORMAS initiative (2012–2020). Annu Rev Public Health. 2021;42(1):345-62. Reviewer #2: Using a random sample of schools in Hermosillo, Sonora, this study shows the poor compliance of 2014 AGREEMENT, which establishes the general guidelines for the sale and distribution of foods and beverages in schools in Mexico. Rather than relying on self-reported data, this study uses direct observation of the school canteens and school yard to measure compliance. These measures are performed to a high technical standard. The study further discusses the barriers and facilitators to implementation of the AGREEMENT in detail. Response: We thank you for your comments and agree that the use of direct observation was a strength of the study, as well as the high technical standards that we employed to ensure valid results. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Hugues et al Response to reviewer comments.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259720.r002
15 Jul 2021 Decision Letter - Shihe Fu, Editor PONE-D-20-39852R1 Poor compliance with school food environment guidelines in elementary schools in Northwest Mexico: a cross-sectional study PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Haby, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Your paper is close to be publishable. The second reviewer recommended acceptance and the first reviewer provided some comments for a minor revision. Please try to address those comments as much as you can. I will not send out the revised version for another round review; instead, I will make the final decision based on my careful reading of your new version. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 29 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Shihe Fu, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: (No Response) Reviewer #2: Comparing to the previous literature which mainly rely on self-reported data, this study uses direct observation of the school canteens and school yard to measure compliance. It is important to report the basic facts of compliance in this rigorous way. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review?** For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: referee report-R1.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259720.r003
Revision 2
20 Sep 2021 Author Response Response to the reviewer 1. The authors could report implementation and compliance rate by public schools and private schools, and by principal/teachers (administrative staff), to enrich their results. In doing so, the authors can help readers to further understand whether the implementation and compliance rates are different in public/private schools and etc. Thank you for the suggestion. We investigated whether the implementation rate was higher in private schools than public schools and found that it was. Full implementation of the agreement was more likely to be reported by private schools than public schools (33.3 vs 9.0%, p=0.009, Fisher’s exact test). We have added this finding to the manuscript (lines 338-340). In relation to compliance, the total number of schools that are partially or fully complying with the agreement is too small (5/103) to enable a meaningful comparison between private and public schools. We are unsure what comparison the reviewer is alluding to in relation to principal/teachers (administrative staff). 2. The school authorities will always think that parents and students are barriers, while they are the facilitators to implantation of the AGGEEMENT. Therefore, figure 2 does not tell us new information. The authors should consider report the difference of reasons (such as lack of knowledge) between public and private schools. In doing so, the authors can help readers get new information about whether there are different reasons of poor compliance for different types of school. Analysis of the reasons why the different groups/persons are barriers is complicated by the fact that the question reporting the reasons is not specific to each of the groups – thus the interpretation of any differences in the reasons is difficult. When we analyzed the differences between public and private schools regarding the reasons (without matching to the group/person), we only found a difference between public and private schools for ‘Lack of interest’. No differences were found for the other reasons. Thus, we have not added this information to the paper. Further, we think that the analysis/results shown in Table 3 is a more useful way to present this information. However, in response to the reviewer’s comment we have replaced figure 2 with a figure that compares the barriers and facilitators to implementation for public and private schools. The graph of barriers shows that parents, students and vendors were more likely to be reported as barriers for public schools than for private schools, which we have now noted in lines 380-382). And the graph of facilitators shows that parents were more likely to be reported as facilitators for private schools than for public schools (see lines 403-404). Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers 19 Sept 2021.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259720.r004
26 Oct 2021 Decision Letter - Shihe Fu, Editor Poor compliance with school food environment guidelines in elementary schools in Northwest Mexico: a cross-sectional study PONE-D-20-39852R2 Dear Dr. Haby, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Shihe Fu, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259720.r005
Formally Accepted
2 Nov 2021 Acceptance Letter - Shihe Fu, Editor PONE-D-20-39852R2 Poor compliance with school food environment guidelines in elementary schools in Northwest Mexico: a cross-sectional study Dear Dr. Haby: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Shihe Fu Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259720.r006

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