Food liking and consumption in schools: Comparison of questionnaire-based surveys with real consumption

Abstract

It is well known that in school catering system the served food rarely will be fully consumed resulting in varying amounts of leftovers, thus part of the food will become waste. This phenomenon significantly decreases the effectiveness of school catering. A key solution would be a better consideration of the students' taste, preference, and opinion.The goal of this research was to assess food liking in secondary schools and explore its relationship with real consumption. Questionnaire-based surveys were conducted in 66 secondary schools where 1973 adolescents (14–18 years) reported their food liking in a five-grade scale. The questionnaire contained 20 food groups. The real consumption was calculated from the weight of returned plate waste. Altogether 3491 plate waste were measured in 66 schools.Interestingly the standard deviations of most liked food groups were relatively lower compared to least liked food groups and the relationship was similar to real consumption data. Namely there is a less variation among consumers when food are better liked and this is also true for consumption.The research also revealed that the questionnaire-based liking scores correlate with real consumption if the number of samples is high enough (more than 50 measured plate) therefore questionnaire-based survey is a useful tool to predict real consumption in a school canteen environment.