Acceptance of vegetable menus of a school lunch program by high school students in seoul and its association with health and dietary behavioral factors

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the acceptance of vegetable menus by high school students and the factors that influence the acceptability. Second-grade high school students (n=389) in Seoul were asked to assess their acceptability of vegetable menus and plate waste, and answered survey questions concerning their demographic characteristics, health-related attitudes, dietary attitudes, dietary habits, and nutritional knowledge. Overall, the menus containing items that were sweet or familiar to the subjects were preferred. Acceptability was significantly associated with the amount of consumption. The acceptability was correlated with dietary habits, dietary attitudes, nutritional knowledge, and several health-related variables. The vegetable-liking groups showed significantly higher scores concerning dietary habits, dietary attitudes, and nutritional knowledge, but did not exhibit a specific pattern of association with the health-related variables. This result implies that intervention strategies focusing on changes in cognitive and/or hedonic factors, such as nutritional education or flavor-flavor learning, would be beneficial for increasing students' acceptance of vegetable menus. © The Korean Society of Food Science and Technology.