13 September 2005
Issued by National Foundation for Educational Research

Scheme helps young children to eat more fruit
The evaluation of the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS) has demonstrated that children ate significantly more fruit while participating in the scheme. There was some evidence of increased knowledge of healthy eating, particularly in children from deprived areas.

Commissioned by the Big Lottery Fund and working in partnership with nutritionists from Leeds University, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) has been evaluating the impact of the SFVS. The research included in-depth interviews with almost 100 five to seven year-olds and explored young children’s diets and their attitudes to food in a way that no other survey has.

Key findings

Consumption
The research paints an interesting picture of the effect of the scheme on what children ate:

• the children receiving the scheme ate significantly more fruit
• the combined fruit and vegetable consumption of children eating school dinners was greater than those who had packed lunches
• children who had packed lunches ate more snacks and desserts than those who had school dinners
• living in areas of high deprivation was associated with lower fruit and vegetable intake and higher consumption of snacks and desserts
• girls (but not boys) ate slightly more vegetables after the introduction of the SFVS
• over the lifespan of the evaluation, fruit and vegetable consumption of children declined at home and increased in school.

Attitudes, awareness and knowledge
There was some evidence to suggest that the SFVS had a positive impact on the attitudes, knowledge and awareness of pupils. Interviews with pupils and staff indicated that the SFVS had encouraged children to try fruit and vegetables previously unfamiliar to them. Also, results from a pupil questionnaire, completed by over 2,000 children on three occasions, showed that:

• pupils were more likely to identify the healthiest options from a choice of snacks, and increasingly so over time
• the increase in the number of fruits tried and liked was greater for the children in SFVS than for the comparison group three months after the introduction of the scheme, though there was no such difference seven months on. (This may be because the children had already sampled all of the SFVS-provided fruits in the first three months of the scheme).
• children living in areas of high deprivation increased their scores on two of the pupil questionnaire items more than expected, suggesting that the impact of the SFVS on these children was higher than for others.

The interviews showed that the SFVS was enthusiastically received by pupils and welcomed by staff, with very few of the staff’s concerns about possible burdens and school disruption realised. This was mainly because staff felt they could implement the scheme flexibly, meeting their school’s needs in their own particular context.

Nutritional analysis
Seven months after the introduction of the scheme:

• older children were eating less sugar
• while younger pupils were eating more fruit and vegetables, their intake of dietary fibre appeared to have been unaffected
• salt intake remained universally high following the intervention.

NFER’s Sandie Schagen said: “The scheme has certainly been successful in encouraging young children to eat more fruit. There is no evidence yet of a permanent change in eating habits, but the children we surveyed had been in the scheme for only a short time. It would be interesting to follow up children who had received fruit throughout their time in infant school at a later date, and see what impact this has on their eating patterns.”

Big Lottery Fund Chief Executive Stephen Dunmore said: "It is clear that eating plenty of different fruit and vegetables can help reduce the risk of some cancers and heart disease, and that healthy eating habits formed in childhood may help to prevent disease later in life. Pupils ate more fruit while taking part in the scheme and it also encouraged them to try fruit and vegetables previously unfamiliar to them."

For more information contact: Gail Goodwin on 01753 637159, g.goodwin@nfer.ac.uk or Sandie Schagen on 01753 637215, s.schagen@nfer.ac.uk.

The final report and summary are available at: http://www.nof.org.uk/default.aspx?tc=493&tct=1&fc=258&fct=1

Notes for editors
The School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS) is one aspect of the ‘5 A DAY’ programme and provides a free piece of fruit or a vegetable to children aged four to six each school day. It was originally piloted in more than 500 schools throughout England in 2000 and 2001, to examine the practicalities of the scheme before rolling it out nationally. It was expanded region by region with funding from the Big Lottery Fund; since April 2004 the Department of Health has been funding the SFVS, which is now operating throughout England.

About the study
The evaluation adopted a quasi-experimental approach, selecting a stratified random sample of 55 schools in the North East (the intervention group), and a comparison group of 45 schools in Yorks and Humber, with the same distribution in terms of school type, performance and percentage of children eligible for free school meals.

Two quantitative instruments were used on three occasions:

• The Child and Diet Evaluation Tool (CADET) was used to record the total dietary intake of the sampled pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 over 24 hours
• A simple questionnaire (based mainly on pictures) was administered to Year 2 pupils (in the classes selected for CADET) on the three ‘CADET days’.

The first data collection took place in March 2004, immediately prior to the introduction of the SFVS in the North East. Findings from the two later surveys (in June and November 2004) made it possible to measure change over time, within and between intervention and comparison groups, and thereby assess possible SFVS-related impacts. Analysis was undertaken by multilevel modelling, based on about 3,000 CADET responses and about 2,000 pupil questionnaire responses.

In addition, case-study visits were made to ten schools involved in the SFVS, where interviews with staff and pupils were conducted in order to explore and interpret the survey findings. These visits included 29 group interviews involving 98 pupils (usually in groups of three), and interviews with 42 members of staff.