The Relationship Between Schools and the Food and Beverage Industry in Guatemala: In-Depth Interviews with School Principals

ABSTRACT

Schools are considered a point of sale (POS) channel to reach students with ultra-processed foods and beverages (UPFB) advertising and products. We sought to determine the type of relationship between schools and the UPFB industry in Guatemala City. During 2020, we interviewed 20 school principals. Descriptive statistics and inductive thematic coding were used for the analysis. Schools struggle with commercialism by engaging in unregulated relationships with the industry where they become a place of commercial value mediated by events sponsorship and exclusive contracts based on trust, among other strategies. School commercialism needs to be restricted to improve school food environments.

KEYWORDS:

• School commercialism
• food environment
• Guatemala
• food and beverage industry
• foodscape

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author´s Contributions

AC conceptualized the study design, collected, analyzed, and interpreted data, also wrote, and revised the manuscript. LS collected, analyzed data, and wrote first drafts of manuscripts. MP interpreted and wrote first drafts of manuscript. SM revised and formatted the manuscript. ANC revised the manuscript. JB conceptualized the study design, interpreted data, and revised the manuscript.

Author Notes

The dollar exchange rate used here is the ot ©cotizacion.co (US$ 1.00 = Q 7.78).

Additional information

Funding

This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada. Funding institution did not have a role in design of study, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript.