Peer pressure is having a positive effect on the nutritional habits of secondary school students in the Midlands, following a successful pilot project involving transition years.
The Midland Health Board has found more students are now eating healthy lunches and choosing their snacks more carefully following the intervention of the SNAKS (School Nutrition Action and Knowledge Survey) which started in 1999.
SNAKS was initiated as part of the Midlands Schools Health Project after a number of teachers expressed concern about the eating habits of their students.
A dietitian, with the help of transition year students, formulated a questionnaire to research the good and bad eating habits of teenagers at school.
Transition years at 10 schools assessed the results and the health board then decided there was an urgent need for "nutritional intervention".
The levels of soft drinks, chocolate, crisps and chips consumed by the students was alarming.
The students set about assessing the stock and pricing structures of their school tuck shops and changed the structures to promote healthy eating choices.
According to the Midland Health Board, a recent survey among first years at the same secondary schools has found that eating habits have improved after the implementation of the SNAKS programme.
The level of fizzy drinks and chocolate included in lunches has decreased, while eating yoghurt and drinking juices has increased.
Tuck shops, in many cases, have increased the price of chocolate, while reducing the price of fruit and health juice drinks.
However, the health board noticed that the level of crisp consumption, either in packed lunches or bought from tuckshops, has either remained constant or increased.
Body weight issues were also examined in the SNAKS study. Not surprisingly, it found female students to be more dissatisfied with their weight (56.2 per cent) than their male counterparts (32.3 per cent).
Dissatisfaction with weight tends to increase from 1st year to 6th year, the study found, with the highest level of dissatisfaction among transition years.
However, some 29 per cent of girls were found to be smoking, compared with 24 per cent of boys.
Both figures exceed the 1999 national average of 21 per cent and the Midland Health Board's own figures of 20 per cent for boys and 18 per cent for girls.
"With such a large proportion of the female student population dissatisfied with their weight, trying to lose weight and smoking at such high levels, consideration must be given to the fact that these females may be using smoking as a method of weight control," the study concludes.
According to Ms Charlotte Johnston, the dietitian who co-ordinated the study, the SNAKS programme had increased awareness of nutritional needs in the schools.
It has been such a success that the health board was invited to make a presentation on SNAKS at a recent conference for health professionals in Galway.
The study will also be presented at a conference in London next week. "Because it was coming from themselves, the students, rather than from us, they seemed to listen to their peers," Ms Johnston said.