Fostering Healthy and Sustainable Diets Through School Meals

NCT04168632 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: 2016-00353
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 1,635
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

School meals have considerable potential to shape children's diets and reduce the climate impact of meals. This study applies linear programming for developing and implementing a climate friendly, nutritious and affordable school lunch menu. The new menu plan will be compared to the baseine menu during a 4-week intervention trial. The outcomes will be food waste, consumption, and pupils' satisfaction with the meals before and after introducing the new meal plan by interrupted time series analysis. Our hypothesis is that school meals can be optimized to be nutritious and more climate friendly, without negatively affecting acceptance, food waste and cost. A number of primary schools in one Swedish municipality with the same menu plan for all schools participated in the study. Their current meal supply was recorded in the form of a food list including amount and cost of each item over a 4-week period. This list was then optimized with linear programming to be as similar as possible to the baseline diet but with a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. No new foods were introduced and none were removed from the list. Nutritionally adequacy was ensured by included constraints into the model. The optimized food list was handed to a professional meal planner and a new menu plan was developed based on the revised food list. Data on food waste and consumption was collected daily during a baseline period of four weeks, and during the four-week intervention period. School lunch satisfaction was assessed twice with an online questionnaire at baseline and during the intervention. After the end of intervention, students and meal staff were interviewed regarding their experiences with the new meals.

Conditions

Food Habits

Keywords

children; public meals; sustainable diets; Agenda 2030

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (3)

• Change in food waste between baseline and intervention periods

  Kitchen waste, serving waste, and plate waste, total per school and per pupil

  During four weeks before the intervention period and during the four week intervention.

• Change in food consumption between baseline and intervention periods

  Food consumption, total per school and per pupil

  During four weeks before the intervention period and during the four week intervention.

• Change in school meal satisfaction between baseline and intervention periods

  Pupils' rating of school meals with the "SkolmatSverige" student questionnaire (ten questions referring to the school lunch with face validity with a varying number of response options)

  Once during the four weeks preceding the intervention as well as once during the last week of intervention.

Study Arms (1)

Intervention

EXPERIMENTAL

A new 4-week menu plan

Other: OPTIMAT

Interventions

OPTIMAT OTHER

The intervention was to serve a new school lunch menu plan as similar as possible to a baseline menu plan but 40% lower in greenhouse gas emissions, being nutritionally adequate and no more expensive.

Intervention

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 6 Years - 16 Years
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Child (0-17)

You may qualify if:

• Primary schools (year 0-9)
• The schools needed to have on-site kitchens
• The schools needed to be able to provide previously used recipes for a standard four-week menu electronically

You may not qualify if:

• Preschools or gymnasiums
• Schools receiving catered food
• Schools that could not provide recipes electronically

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Karolinska Institutet: lead
• The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS): collaborator
• Göteborg University: collaborator
• University College Copenhagen: collaborator

Study Sites (1)

Botkyrka municipality

Stockholm, Botkyrka, 14785, Sweden

Location

Related Publications (3)

• Eustachio Colombo P, Patterson E, Schafer Elinder L, Lindroos AK, Sonesson U, Darmon N, Parlesak A. Optimizing School Food Supply: Integrating Environmental, Health, Economic, and Cultural Dimensions of Diet Sustainability with Linear Programming. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Aug 21;16(17):3019. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16173019.

  PMID: 31438517 BACKGROUND

• Eustachio Colombo P, Elinder LS, Patterson E, Parlesak A, Lindroos AK, Andermo S. Barriers and facilitators to successful implementation of sustainable school meals: a qualitative study of the OPTIMAT-intervention. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2021 Jul 3;18(1):89. doi: 10.1186/s12966-021-01158-z.

  PMID: 34217304 DERIVED

• Eustachio Colombo P, Patterson E, Lindroos AK, Parlesak A, Elinder LS. Sustainable and acceptable school meals through optimization analysis: an intervention study. Nutr J. 2020 Jun 24;19(1):61. doi: 10.1186/s12937-020-00579-z.

  PMID: 32580743 DERIVED

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Feeding Behavior

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Behavior, Animal; Behavior

Study Officials

• Liselotte Schäfer Elinder, professor

  Karolinsk Institutet

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NA
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: PREVENTION
• Intervention Model: SINGLE GROUP
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: professor

Model Details: Three schools from one municipality in the Region Stockholm met inclusion criteria and were eligible to participate in the intervention. These schools all served the baseline followed by the new menu. Each period lasted four weeks.

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: November 14, 2019
• First Posted: November 19, 2019
• Study Start: February 7, 2019
• Primary Completion: May 30, 2019
• Study Completion: August 30, 2019
• Last Updated: February 4, 2022

Record last verified: 2022-01

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

SE (1)