Exploring upper secondary school students' experiences of the “Free school meals and sustainable canteens” pilot project in Viken county

Background: Current human diets are causing detriment to human health, the environment, and climate. Policies that support population shift towards more sustainable and healthy diets are crucial to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Free school meals may have the potential to broadly influence dietary habits of students, from all socioeconomic backgrounds. In autumn 2020, Viken county municipality initiated a “Free school meals and sustainable canteens” pilot project in 13 upper secondary schools. The pilot project aims to gain insight to how healthy and sustainable free school meals can eventually be implemented in the rest of Viken. As the primary target group, students can offer valuable insights to current implementation and the future scaling of the initiative. Aim: This thesis aimed to explore the experiences of upper secondary school students taking part in the Viken “Free school meals and sustainable canteen pilot project”. The thesis set out to answer three research questions relating to how the students view the free school meals and canteen food, the sustainability components, and their participation in the decision-making processes of the pilot project. Method: The thesis used a qualitative approach whereby four focus group interviews were carried out with a total of 23 students at Ål school and Kalnes school. Data was thematically analysed by which initial codes were identified and subthemes and main themes formed. Findings: Many students were positive to having a free meal offer, yet several found meals to deviate from their food preferences. Students had varied levels of understanding of sustainability. They recognised food sustainability as having many benefits on a societal level but did not find sustainability to be important for their own food choices. Furthermore, students experienced their participation to be low. They had little knowledge and understanding about the pilot projects aims and conditions and they experienced that their views were often not heard or taken into account in decisions. This had several repercussions on students overall view of the pilot project. Conclusions and implications: The findings point to a need to balance healthy and sustainable meals with students' preferences. Furthermore, increasing students’ knowledge of sustainability components through connecting classroom teaching with the school meals may support the shaping of sustainable dietary behaviours. Lastly, increasing the degree of student participation in design and implementation could facilitate the successful scaling of the initiative to the rest of the schools in Viken