A Socio-ecological Perspective on the Food Dudes Healthy Eating Programme

In response to poor levels of fruit and vegetable consumption in children across the UK, numerous interventions have been developed in schools in an attempt to encourage children to meet the recommended five a day. This programme of research examined the potential of a school-based healthy eating intervention, the Food Dudes programme, to increase children’s fruit and vegetable consumption in the long-term, at both school and at home, in 15 schools across the West Midlands. In contrast to previous studies that focused on the internal validity of the intervention, the programme of research utilised a socio-ecological approach to explore the wider contextual factors involved in behaviour change, beyond discussion of efficacy. Evidence from the six outputs indicated that the Programme was: effective in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in the short-term only; more effective for children who consumed school-provided lunches than those provided from home (output 3); did not result in any decreases in high fat and/or sugar foods (output 4), not able to transfer to the home environment (output 5); and difficult to implement as part of the school day (output 6). Sustaining healthy eating behaviours beyond the intervention was a key challenge. Whilst interventions such as Food Dudes may work at the intrapersonal level of an ecological system, issues of sustainability arise from the intervention’s inability to extend or function beyond individual level behaviour change. The ecological approach on children’s’ eating behaviour offers an alternative theoretical approach to explain the effectiveness of interventions such as Food Dudes, and as a basis for proposing alternative intervention strategies.