Fostering Healthy and Sustainable Diets Through School Meals (OPTIMAT Uppsala)

NCT04312386 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: 2020-00353
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 2,000
• 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 baseline 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 analyzed 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. Four primary schools in one Swedish municipality with the same menu plan for all schools will participate in the study. Their current meal supply will be recorded in the form of a food list including amount and cost of each item over a 4-week period. This list will then be optimized with linear programming to be as similar as possible to the baseline diet but with a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of about 30%. No new foods will be introduced and none will be removed from the list. Nutritionally adequacy will be ensured by including constraints into the model. The optimized food list will be handed to the municipality's meal planner and a new menu plan will be developed based on the revised food list. Data on food waste and consumption will be collected daily during a baseline period of four weeks, and during the four-week intervention period. School lunch satisfaction will be assessed twice with an online questionnaire at baseline and during the intervention.

Conditions

Food Habits

Keywords

Children; Public meals; Sustainable diets; Agenda 2030; Greenhouse gas emissions

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (4)

• Change in plate waste between baseline and intervention periods measured with kitchen-scales

  Plate waste, total per school and per pupil assessed with the School Food Sweden's consumption and waste measurement tool

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

• Change in serving waste between baseline and intervention periods measured with kitchen-scales

  Serving waste, total per school assessed with the School Food Sweden's consumption and waste measurement tool

  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 assessed with the School Food Sweden's consumption and waste measurement tool

  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 School Food Sweden's student questionnaire (ten questions referring to the school lunch with good face validity and with a varying number of response options from always to never or number of times per week)

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

Secondary Outcomes (3)

• Change in prepared food between baseline and intervention periods measured with kitchen-scales

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

• Change in leftover food between baseline and intervention periods

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

• Change in number of lunch consumers between baseline and intervention periods

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

Study Arms (1)

A new 4-week lunch menu

EXPERIMENTAL

Optimized lunch menu with 30% lower greenhouse gas emissions, nutritionally adequate

Other: OPTIMAT

Interventions

OPTIMAT OTHER

Baseline menue, not optimized

A new 4-week lunch menu

Eligibility Criteria

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

You may qualify if:

• Primary schools (children between 6-16 years in school years 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
• Göteborg University: collaborator
• The Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS): collaborator

Study Sites (1)

Liselotte Schäfer Elinder

Stockholm, 11854, Sweden

Location

Related Publications (1)

• 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 RESULT

MeSH Terms

Conditions

Feeding Behavior

Condition Hierarchy (Ancestors)

Behavior, Animal; Behavior

Study Officials

• Liselotte Schäfer Elinder, PhD

  Karolinsk Institutet

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

• Patricia Eustachio Colombo, MMsc.

  Karolinsk Institutet

  STUDY CHAIR

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: Four schools from one county Sweden meet inclusion criteria and are eligible to participate in the intervention. These schools will all serve the baseline menu followed by the new menu. Each period will last for four weeks.

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: January 21, 2020
• First Posted: March 18, 2020
• Study Start: January 20, 2020
• Primary Completion: August 20, 2020
• Study Completion: December 31, 2021
• Last Updated: January 24, 2022

Record last verified: 2022-01

Data Sharing

• IPD Sharing: Will not share

Locations

SE (1)