Nordic adolescents’ school lunch patterns and their suggestions for making healthy choices at school easier

This article examines Nordic adolescents’ school lunch patterns and their perceptions of how making healthy choices at school could be easier. Analysis is based on a quantitative data-set collected between 2006 and 2007 as part of a Nordic research project. The sample of 1539 respondents consisted of 14–17 year old adolescents from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. The number of adolescents regularly eating either a packed lunch or a hot school lunch differed between countries and statistically significant differences were found between girls’ and boys’ school lunch patterns in the Swedish and Finnish data. Results suggest that adolescents have an understanding of what is healthy, but that school resources do not always support their ability to make healthy choices. Adolescents’ own suggestions for improvement imply that more attention should be paid to building a healthy school food environment. An important future challenge is trying to involve school health care personnel and aligning classroom activities more coherently with adolescents’ eating patterns during the school day.

► We examine Nordic adolescents’ school lunch patterns.
► Suggestions on how healthier choices at school could be made easier were analyzed.
► Two different school lunch systems formed the background of the examination.
► The food environment at school does not always fully support healthy choices.
► Adolescents’ viewpoints are needed when promoting healthy eating at school.