What Are Today's Children Eating?

Abstract

As a leading supplier of food management services to schools, Gardner Merchant has conducted extensive national market research into the eating patterns of schoolchildren. The fifth biennial school meals survey confirms that today's children continue to replace the traditional three meals a day with a ‘grazing’ eating pattern. However, it has become questionable whether this pattern of consumption inherently results in a poorly balanced diet. The survey gives an insight to the attitudes, perception and eating behaviour of schoolchildren and considers how they and their parents view school meals today. Trends have been tracked through the nineties to assess the impact of healthy eating messages and to determine how ‘eating out’ experiences in the High Street have influenced the expectations of children and their parents. The results of the survey have been used to inform the development of a new school food service offer called EDz.

Citation

Strong, M. (1999), "What Are Today's Children Eating?", International Journal of Advertising and Marketing to Children, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 73-81. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb027599