Effects of school lunches on dietary attitudes and habits of families with elementary school children

Abstract

　The purpose of this study was to clarify how families change when elementary school students start eating their school lunch and to explore approaches to improve the families' eating attitudes and habits. The subjects were parents of children who entered 11 elementary schools where school lunches are provided by the school lunch center in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, in April 2021. Questionnaire surveys were administered four times in April, June, July, and October of that year.

　Parents had positive impressions of the school lunches, perceiving them as "healthy" and "excellent as a subject for food and eating education." As the children in the study families began eating their school lunches, the families became more interested in the food and eating, and talked about food-related topics. Families whose children talked about school lunches were more interested in and talked about the food and eating versus those whose children did not. Although the percentage of children talking about school lunches at home remained high at 69.9% in October, it significantly decreased compared to June. A text-mining analysis revealed that while many words with reporting elements such as "menu" and "eat" were used in June, words such as "topic" and "talk" that indicated communication within the family became more common in July, and words that suggest a behavior change such as "make", "think", and "balance" were extracted at the top of the list in October.

　We consider that to keep families interested in school lunches and to encourage them to change their own behavior to improve their eating habits, it is necessary to study educational materials that make school lunches a regular topic of conversation at home and to create a system centered on the provision of school lunches.