Browsing by Subject "contextual factors"

The literature review focused on the history, present and future challenges of the Finnish school meal. According to earlier studies most of the students eat the school lunch, however only one third of them eat all components that are part of the meal. The aim of this work was to investigate background- and contextual factors affecting acceptance of school meals. A total of 147 students from two schools in Helsinki participated in the study. They were third graders (n=43; 20 girls, 23 boys), sixth graders (n=54, 28 girls, 26 boys), and eight or nine graders (n=31; 17 girls, 14 boys). The participants evaluated 13 school meals and 26 main dishes (13 basic dishes and 13 vegetarian dishes). The main dishes differed due to different dish types and main ingredients. The participants evaluated the meals and the dining situation on questionnaires, in a class room, after the lunch break. A photo of the meal of the day was projected on a screen to remind them of the experience. The respondents checked the immediate emotion when seeing the meal, liking of the meal and its components, the appropriateness of saltiness, spiciness and temperature of the main dish and the dining situation. Demographic data, attitude to school meals in general, food neophobia score, and ratings as response to food names of 30 school meals were collected separately. Liking of the meals and meal components were affected by the age and food neophobia score of the participant. The third graders scored higher for most main dishes and meal components than the sixth graders. Participants with a lower food neophobia score liked the meals better than participants with high scores. 35 % of the overall acceptance of school meals was explained by attitude towards school meals in general, the temperature of the main dish, the participants hunger state before lunch, the saltiness of the main dish, food neophobia and the temperature of the drink in a stepwise regression model. Hunger state was the most explanative factor for the third graders, while the sixth graders acceptance to school meals was mainly explained by the attitude towards school meals in general. The results of this study indicate that the attitude towards school meals get more negative with age. Hence, identifying the factors underlying this attitude change is important in order for the school meal to be accepted and eaten also by older students.