Technology and Design Innovation for School Lunch

Improving dietary intake among low-income youth is critical to reducing obesity, and schools are arguably the most important system in which to intervene. In 2010, Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act to better align school meal standards with the Dietary Guidelines, making school meals a nutritious option for students. Increasing participation in the school meal program, therefore, especially among low-income youth, has the potential to improve dietary intake among students and ultimately reduce childhood obesity.

Over three school years, the University of California (Berkeley's School of Public Health and the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources' Nutrition Policy Institute) will evaluate an innovative, student-centered school-lunch intervention to increase school lunch participation and improve dietary intake among low-income middle and high school students. The project will be conducted in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), a large and diverse urban district serving over 32,000 students (70% of total) eligible for free or reduced-price meals. The intervention, developed in partnership with the global design firm IDEO, aims to promote healthier habits by leveraging principals of behavior economics. The intervention involves the following three components: 1) a smartphone application (SmartMeal) that allows students to pre-order school lunches, receive nutrition information about school lunch options, and provide feedback about meals to food service staff, 2) distributed points of sale for school meals, achieved through the addition of mobile food carts and vending machines, and 3) a staff wellness curriculum that encourages staff to promote school meals and model healthful eating behaviors to students.