Marketing Quarterly 1999;5:90–8.

The USDA School Meals Initiative for Healthy Children, published in 1995, is a comprehensive plan that aims to ensure that children have healthy meals at school. A major part of this plan is an update of nutrition standards that requires school meals to meet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Recognizing that simply publishing a regulation is not likely to change children's diets, USDA established Team Nutrition to ensure that schools are able to implement the plan, and that students avail themselves of the healthier meals offered. The goals of Team Nutrition include: eating less fat; eating more fruits, vegetables, and grains; and eating a variety of foods. Team Nutrition supports the School Meals Initiative through two interrelated components: Multifaceted Nutrition Education is delivered through the media, in schools, and at home to build skills and motivate children to make food choices for a healthful diet. The nutrition education approach and its components were developed and implemented following the tenets of social cognitive theory (SCT) and social marketing. The objectives of this component were to provide consistent and relevant messages through multiple channels that gain children’s attention, motivate them to engage in desired behaviors, increase their self-efficacy in performing desired behaviors and reinforces their actual performance of the behaviors (Bandura