Beyond “vegetarian” : exploring how menu words influence children’s perception of sustainable school meals

Sammanfattning

As agrifood systems account for an estimated third of global greenhouse gas emissions, with livestock as the single largest contributor, shifting diets toward plant-based alternatives has become an urgent sustainability priority. School meals in Sweden represent a strategic arena for this transition as dietary habits are formed early in life, and over a million meals are served daily across Swedish schools. Yet plant-based dishes consistently face low acceptance among children, making this shift challenging. One underexplored factor in this resistance is the role of menu words, and this study investigates how menu words influence school children's perceptions of a sustainable dish through an exploratory mixed methods design. The design comprised three complementary sub-studies and was conducted at a private school in Stockholm, Sweden. A semi-structured interview with the school's head chef revealed that menu naming is an intuitive practice largely unsupported by formal guidance, and that the word "vegetarian" functions as a consistent deterrent among pupils. A classroom workshop with two grade five classes found that sensory and affective words generated the most positive associations with a vegetarian dish, while category-based and origin-based language produced confusion or negativity. An online preference ranking survey (grades 6-9, n = 125) confirmed these patterns, as the affective dish name was ranked significantly more appealing than all others (p<.001). The survey also revealed that sensory and affective dish names can make a vegetarian dish compete with a similar meat-based dish. The findings suggest that emotional and sensory menu words are more effective than explicit vegetarian labelling or geographic quality markers in making sustainable dishes appealing to school children. A knowledge gap was also identified at the practitioner level. Given the exploratory and context-specific nature of the study, findings should be treated as indicative rather than generalisable, and as a foundation for future research and practical guidance in school food settings.