The impact of serving practices on children’s food intake in schools

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ambience factors which affect children’s consumption of school meals, in order to provide policy makers and school canteen managers with practical recommendations on how to improve children’s food intake in the future. The study was conducted in four schools in Belgrade, over a period of two weeks, adopting the techniques of in-field observation and content analysis. Overall, forty visits to school restaurants were performed and 205 pictures were gathered on those occasions. The results show that all three investigated aspects (i.e. kitchenscape, tablescape and platescape) affect children’s food consumption, as well as their willingness to eat specific food items. The avenues of further research as regards this topic are also addressed.