School Food Sweden (SkolmatSverige)
School meals are provided free of cost for all children aged 6-16 years in Sweden and since 2011 it is stated in law that school meals should be “nutritious”.
Quality assessment
Use of SkolmatSverige is free of charge and can be used at any time during the school year. Nine questionnaires are included to be answered by meal staff and one by the pupils. After answering the questionnaires an automatic report describing different quality aspects and providing an overall picture of the quality of school meals will be automatically generated and sent to the user. This feedback, plus encouragement to create an action plan helps the staff to improve school meal quality.
Results and further work
Today, about half of all primary schools in Sweden use the SkolmatSverige tool. The results from repeated use of the tool show that both the law from 2011 that school meals should be “nutritious” in combination with repeated self-audit with automatic feedback appears effective in helping schools to improve school meal quality. Self-audit with feedback may be therefore an effective complement to legislation, or a promising alternative in settings where regulation is not an option.
See www.skolmatsverige.se (only in Swedish).
Publications
Patterson E, Elinder LS. Improvements in school meal quality in Sweden after the introduction of new legislation-a 2-year follow-up. European Journal of Public Health. 2014; 25(4):555-560.
What works to improve school lunch nutritional quality - legislation or self-audit?
Patterson E, Andersson F, Schäfer Elinder L.
SkolmatSverige – verktyget som bidrar till utveckling av skolmåltidens kvalitet.
Patterson E, Elinder LS. Nordisk Nutrition nr 1, 2016.