Plus one serve: Using what works to increase provision and consumption of vegetables in secondary school canteens

This intervention, the Chef in Schools Plus Program, aims to transform secondary school lunches by professional chefs, school canteen managers, and students working together to create better school meals containing vegetables. A cluster-randomised feasibility study will be conducted with participating secondary schools randomly allocated to either the intervention arm or the control arm (usual practice) . The intervention will be tailored to each school. It consists of a 3-week planning period and an 8-week implementation period. A) The intervention planning will utilise behaviour change science, particularly the Behaviour Change Wheel, and the UK’s Design Council’s Double Diamond framework to co-design of new vegetable menu items for the school canteen and an associated promotion program. It will consist of the following: 1) The school canteen manager participating in a structured discussion with the research team (experienced nutrition scientist with at least 10 years of experience and nutrition science PhD student) to understand their views about how to increase sales and student consumption of vegetables/vegetable menu items from their school canteen. The structured discussion will be held at the school and will last up to 30 minutes. 2) Formation of a School Canteen Users’ Student Representative Group (SCUSRG) consisting of a maximum of 10 canteen-using students per school. 3) The SCUSRG participating in a focus group to explore barriers and motivation factors to the purchase vegetable menu items from their school canteen. The focus group will be facilitated by the research team, held at the school and will last up to 30 minutes. 4) The school canteen manager and SCUSRG participating in three, co-design workshops with a professional chef and the research team, using the results from the stakeholder interview and focus group and inspiration from previously developed school canteen recipes (e.g. the recipes on School Food Matters www.schoolfoodmatters.org.au/recipes). During these workshops participants will design some vegetable menu items for their school canteen (containing at least 0.5 serve of vegetables) and an accompanying promotion program. The workshops will be held at the schools and each last up to 30 minutes. Following the 3-week planning period, during the 8-week implementation period the newly designed vegetable menu items will be offered for sale at the school canteen and the accompanying promotion program will be run in the school. B) During the 8-week implementation period: 1) The professional chef will support the canteen team several times a week for 8 weeks to prepare the new vegetable items. (This will taper off as the canteen staff become more proficient at preparing the new vegetable menu items). 2) Vegetables required for the newly designed vegetable menu items will be delivered to the schools (free of charge). 3) The research team (nutrition scientists) will work with the school to facilitate delivery of the co-designed accompanying promotion program for the new vegetable menu items. As the intervention is tailored to each school, the actual vegetable menu items and accompanying promotion program will differ from school to school. Fidelity of the intervention will be assessed through: 1) a student survey (assessing student awareness of the new vegetable dishes and promotion campaign); 2) an audit of savoury dishes containing at least half a serve of vegetables conducted each week during the 8-week intervention implementation period by the research team using the canteen menus; 3) a promotions process evaluation for which a promotions evaluation data form will be completed by the research team for each promotional activity undertaken, listing details of the following: type of promotion, time and date of promotion and duration (if applicable), who was involved (e.g. research team, students, canteen staff) and estimated reach of the promotion.