A new piece of joint research reveals that state school students are much less interested in healthy school meals than students in the independent school sector.
Angela Carroll, senior teaching fellow in marketing at Leeds University Business School (LUBS), said: “This also potentially exposes a lack of engagement between caterers and students that must be addressed if interest in healthy eating among students is to be ignited.”
The research, which studied responses from more than 2,500 school students across five state schools and four independent schools, was undertaken by consultancy firm The Litmus Partnership, in conjunction with Carroll and Louise Barton, an undergraduate research internship student at LUBS.
It examined how different factors influenced the perceived importance of healthy options in school meals.
The key findings included:
· independent school students rate the availability of healthy food options as significantly more important to them than state school counterparts
· independent school students are happier with the selection of healthy options available to them
· socio-economic backgrounds are likely to affect the evaluation of satisfaction and importance
· female and male students in years 7–9 (ages 11–14) across state and independent schools attach decreasing importance on healthy options; after that age, girls attach increasing importance to it and boys much less
· peers at school are an important reference group, especially for girls
· family diet and eating traditions may have a significant effect but, at independent schools, pupils may also be strongly influenced by peers because of eating traditions at those schools.
Nigel Forbes, managing partner from the Litmus Partnership, suggests there are a number of actions that schools could take to encourage greater levels of healthy eating among pupils and challenge the findings.
“The research showed that there is a gap between the importance of availability of healthy food choices and pupil satisfaction with these choices, and it’s worrying that pupils are registering discontent with the healthy eating options available to them at school.
“Both state and independent schools could personalise the service of healthy options or involve students more in decision-making to educate and excite in nutrition.
“Where schools have included nutrition in their curriculums or engaged the students with activities like interactive tasting sessions with professional chefs, or even run cooking classes to prepare healthy meals, interest in healthy food has increased.
“That’s good news for pupil health and future society.”
Carroll added: “It can be safely assumed that the children at independent schools are mainly from more affluent families, whereas the pupils from state schools will probably come from a wide variety of backgrounds with varying levels of income.
“Research has shown that socio-economic factors, especially the effect of socialisation from family, have important effects on preferences and attitudes towards food, which in turn influences children’s perception of weight and nutrition.”