A study of food choice in schools has taken the existing smart card system of meal payment available in schools, and upgraded it to research children’s food choices at mealtimes.

A team led by the Institute of Food Research spent two years recording children’s eating behaviours at Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys, an independent school in Hertfordshire. Through the personalised smart cards, which electronically record the food chosen, researchers worked out that only 41 per cent of 1,900 meals eaten contained the minimum amount of fibre, iron and vitamins required.

Project leader Dr Nigel Lambert said: “School dinners are currently a highly political and emotive social issue. The government has pledged to tackle menus, but measuring children’s eating habits at school is fraught with difficulties. Accurate information is necessary to support the government’s public health policies. Smart card technology could provide a practical and accurate solution.”

The aim of the reseach was to find out whether smart card technology could be used to collect such information, according to Dr Lambert the study has been a success.”No questionnaires were required, nor an army of researchers, but the system succeeded in objectively recording food choice with 99% accuracy. It can also be continued long term, unlike the more usual three to seven day ’snapshot’ studies.”

Researchers now plan to collect school meal data across four mixed state schools to monitor the effectiveness of healthy eating campaigns .