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At lunchtime in rural Maine middle schools, University of Maine researchers stood at two points in the cafeteria.

At the first, students received a numbered card after picking up their meals. Researchers photographed each tray from above.

Then they waited.

Before students dumped what was left into the trash, researchers photographed the trays again.

The images captured a problem that plays out every day in school cafeterias: Students were offered fruit, but much of it was never eaten.

Sometimes they did not take it. Sometimes an apple came back with one bite missing. Other fruit was barely touched.

For 91���� researchers, those trays became the starting point for a larger question: What would middle school students actually eat?

The answer was smoothies.

A three-year study led by researchers in 91����’s School of Food and Agriculture found that offering frozen fruit smoothies during lunch increased the amount of fruit students selected and consumed while sharply reducing waste. The work also showed something broader: Asking adolescents what they want — and involving them in designing a solution — can change their food choices.

The research led to , or Helping Early Adolescents Live Their Healthiest Youth, a four-part smoothie and nutrition education program developed at 91����. The program is now available to schools nationwide through a . The findings are also informing efforts to change federal school meal rules that can make it .

Start by asking students

“Middle school is often an overlooked age group when it comes to nutrition programming,” said Jade McNamara, associate professor of human nutrition at 91���� and registered dietitian, who directed the research. “Adolescents are at an age where they can tell you what they want to eat and what they’re interested in. And they have strong opinions.”

The age group also represents an important point for intervention, as fruit consumption declines as children move into adolescence.

Rather than enter schools with a predetermined program, McNamara and then-91���� doctoral student and registered dietitian nutritionist Amelia Sullivan spent about a year listening.

They held focus groups, studied cafeteria environments, used a Veggie Meter to estimate students’ fruit and vegetable intake and documented food selection and waste through tray photography.

Three trained research assistants independently scored how much food remained on each tray, then reviewed disagreements together. By the later phase of the study, their assessments agreed about 97% of the time.

The research was supported by the �²⳾����’s Wild Blueberry Research & Innovation Center Fund. , a Maine family-owned food company established in 1874, approached 91���� as part of its mission to help the world eat more fruit. The partnership offered a way to address the nation’s fruit consumption gap at the state level.

The researchers decided students should help determine how.

“We don’t, as researchers, want to go into an environment we have nothing to do with and assume we know the right answer,” Sullivan said. “We wanted to know what’s happening here.”

Sullivan led much of the work inside the schools as a 91���� doctoral student, working with undergraduate and graduate research assistants to collect and analyze data and helping turn student feedback into a program the team could test. She completed her doctorate in May and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Texas A&M AgriLife Research.

What Sullivan and the team saw in the tray photographs was striking: Fruit was one of the most wasted components of the meals they studied.

Nationally, only about one-third of adolescents consume whole fruit on a given day, and between 20% and 40% of fruit served through the National School Lunch Program is wasted, according to research cited in the HEALTHY toolkit.

Students chose smoothies

The 91���� team then asked students what might change that.

More than 400 students voted on strategies that previous research suggested could improve fruit consumption, including cafeteria murals, taste tests and a smoothie bar. 91���� 85% chose smoothies.

“We really needed to partner with the students and get their buy-in before we did anything,” McNamara said.

Sullivan and the research team developed four smoothies around themes students raised in focus groups, including athletic performance, skin and immune health, hydration and locally grown food. Each 8-ounce smoothie paired frozen fruit, milk and Greek yogurt with a short nutrition lesson and a SMART goal activity.

The program was tested at two experimental schools, with three other schools serving as comparisons.

In experimental schools, when smoothies were offered, fruit selection rose from 78% to 98%. Students consumed about 0.4 cups of fruit from smoothies, compared with about 0.1 cups from standard fruit. They wasted about 14% of smoothie servings, compared with 64% of standard fruit.

Researchers also saw improvement in Veggie Meter scores among students who began with the lowest readings, suggesting some of the largest changes occurred among students with the lowest baseline fruit and vegetable intake.

And students wanted more.

91���� nine in 10 said they would or might drink a smoothie again at school. Some took recipes home. Others asked how many smoothies they would need to drink to improve their Veggie Meter scores.

“These were students who felt like their voices were heard,” Sullivan said. “From that, they were more willing and open to try what we were giving them.”

From research to the cafeteria

The challenge is turning a successful program into something schools can actually use.

Many school kitchens were built for reheating and serving food, not preparing meals from scratch. Some lack commercial blenders, enough electrical outlets. Nutrition directors and their staffs are also stretched thin, leaving little time to prepare hundreds of smoothies during lunch.

One nutrition director, Sullivan recalled, posed a basic question: Where would the blender even go?

Nutrition directors interviewed as part of the study said they were interested in smoothies but needed practical guidance.

So the 91���� team turned the HEALTHY research into a 41-page implementation toolkit with scaled recipes, nutrition lessons, equipment options, student engagement strategies and evaluation tools. It includes four smoothie lessons — Power Play Shake, Citrus Splash, Hydration Hero and Maine Maple Blueberry — that can be offered as a series or individually.

There is also a federal obstacle.

Under current National School Lunch Program guidelines, whole fruit can count as fruit when served on a tray. Because no more than half of weekly fruit and vegetable offerings can be provided in juice form, the rule can limit how often schools serve smoothies.

That distinction has become the next phase of the project.

The research team, �²⳾����’s and the American Frozen Food Institute brought the issue to Washington, D.C., and have advocated for federal policy that better recognizes whole frozen fruit used in smoothies. They have also presented the work to nutrition professionals as a model other schools could adapt.

A bigger lesson than smoothies

Sullivan does not expect the exact HEALTHY model to work in every school.

“Do I think this exact smoothie program could be replicated in all 50 states? No,” Sullivan said. “Do I think the basis of the research can be translated to all 50 states? Yes. We need to engage students. We need to ask them what they want.”

The project’s lessons can extend beyond schools, too. For families interested in incorporating smoothies at home, Sullivan with tips for building a balanced smoothie and links to recipes.

For Sullivan, though, the broader takeaway is about rethinking what a school cafeteria can be.

“My biggest takeaway from this whole research is that we need to start reenvisioning the way we see the school cafeteria,” she said. “It can be more of a community setting and a collaborative, hands-on educational setting.”

And sometimes, finding a better answer starts with looking at what students leave on their trays.

Contact: David Nordman, david.nordman@maine.edu