Meatless Monday in the middle schools: A theory-based approach to improving young adolescents' food choices in the cafeteria

To address childhood obesity, interventions need to be developed that improve adolescents' food choices. While challenging, it is vital to work with middle school students as they are becoming more autonomous in their food choices. Emerging concerns about appearance are not reflected in young adolescents' food choices – and these poor choices can have immediate and life-long health effects.

Few interventions occur in middle schools, and even fewer involve theory-based approaches delivered solely in the cafeteria. Some comprehensive (cafeteria, classroom, after-school) interventions have proven successful; however, extensive and exhaustive qualities of these make them unattainable to most U.S. schools. A lack of time and resources require simpler, less expensive approaches to improving food choice behaviors.

This intervention, based on the Theory of Planned Behavior, used a low-cost approach to improve students' food choices in the cafeteria. Central to the intervention was the Meatless Monday (MM) national campaign, which encourages people to choose low-saturated fat, non-meat options on Mondays and eat more healthy foods, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Two similar Baltimore County schools participated – one as the intervention, the other as the control.

The intervention delivered targeted messages in the form of posters, table tents, and signage near MM food options. In evaluating the success of this intervention, not only were student surveys considered, but also sales data obtained from the Office of Nutrition and Food Services. It is believed that lessons learned from this intervention may result in better food choices among middle school students across the U.S.