A Culinary Approach to Healthy Menu Items: Middle School Students' Opinion of School Lunch and Lunch Decision Factors

With the recent obesity epidemic, school foodservice managers and culinary experts are looking for ways to improve adolescents' diets. School lunches provide an ideal opportunity for offering nutritious menu items and encouraging healthy diets. The purpose of this study was to explore (1) whether increase fruit and vegetable menu choices in school lunch increased middle school students' (grades 6-8) overall opinion of school lunch, (2) which factors were used by students in deciding what to eat at school, and (3) which factors affected students' overall opinion of school lunch. Students from five middle schools in one central Kentucky county completed a voluntary questionnaire. A total of 947 middle school students participated for a total response rate of 23%. The variables measured in the study included opinion of school lunch, awareness of healthy menu items, number of healthymenu items tried, number of sampling cart items tried, and decisions factors regarding what to eat at school. Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and test of proportions were performed. This study found that students who tried the greatest number of healthy menu items found school lunch to be significantly much better. The fivemost important deciding factors regarding what to eat at school were: food tastes good, food looks good, how hungry the student is, food is healthy, and amount of food. Sixth graders found healthiness of food to be a significantly stronger factor than seventh and eighth graders and were more influenced by what parents wanted them to eat. Our findings encourage school foodservice managers and culinary experts to target adolescents early. School foodservice teams should keep foremost in mind that nutritious fruit and vegetable menu items, which taste good, are visually appealing, and satisfy hunger, are important to adolescents. (C) 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.