Building a sustainable diet in early childhood education may sound like a small, local matter — a few changed recipes on a daycare menu. Yet a new Finnish study suggests that these small, everyday changes can add up to something with real climate and health significance. The study, published in the European Journal of Nutrition in 2026 and led by researchers from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), and the University of Helsinki, offers one of the clearest pieces of evidence yet that early childhood education and care (ECEC) can be a genuine engine for dietary change.

Why Early Childhood Education Is the Right Place to Start

Finland provides a uniquely favourable setting for testing this idea. Nearly 90% of children aged 3–5 attend early childhood education and care, and almost all of them eat breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack there as part of their daily routine. Meals must meet national nutritional requirements, and food education — through both structured lessons and everyday play, games, and discussion — is already woven into daily pedagogical practice.

In other words, ECEC centres are not just childcare settings; they are food environments that reach nearly an entire generation of children at a formative age, when eating habits are still being shaped and are more likely to carry into adulthood. This is precisely what makes a sustainable diet in early childhood education such a promising lever for public health and environmental policy alike — far more scalable than trying to change habits household by household.

Inside the FoodStep Study

The research, known as the FoodStep project, worked with 23 ECEC centres across four Finnish municipalities — one in Päijät-Häme in southern Finland and three in South Ostrobothnia in the west. Centres were assigned to either an intervention group or a control group, and the diets of 111 children aged 3 to 5 were tracked over a ten-month period, from March to December 2022, using detailed food frequency questionnaires completed separately for meals eaten at daycare and meals eaten at home.

The intervention itself was carefully co-designed rather than imposed from above. Researchers worked through three co-creation workshops with food service staff, ECEC professionals, and municipal decision-makers to shape a menu that included more vegetables, fruit, berries, legumes, and sustainably sourced fish — preferably from nearby waters — alongside less red meat and processed meat, and milk consumption adjusted toward recommended levels. Early childhood educators received training sessions to support the rollout, and food education materials were tailored specifically to the new menu so that classroom activities reinforced what appeared on children’s plates.

What Changed — and What Didn’t

The results are notable both for what shifted and for what stayed reassuringly stable.

What increased: consumption of legumes and legume products, peas and beans, and fish sourced from nearby areas rose substantially at the intervention centres. Several of these changes had very large effect sizes — for instance, the increase in nearby-area fish consumption had an effect size of 2.54, and legumes and legume products showed an effect size of 1.79, both far above the threshold researchers consider a strong, meaningful shift.

What decreased: red meat, sausages, and other processed meat products dropped meaningfully at the intervention centres, with beef alone showing an effect size of 1.36. Correspondingly, the proportion of protein coming from plant sources increased, while protein from meat, fish, and eggs decreased.

What stayed the same: importantly, energy intake did not change, and nutrient intake was almost entirely unaffected. Of all the nutrients studied, only cholesterol and selenium intake decreased slightly at the intervention centres — and selenium levels remained within a sufficient range. In other words, the healthier, more plant-forward menu did not come at the cost of nutritional adequacy. On the other hand, the intervention did not increase children’s consumption of fruit and berries, and it did not reduce milk consumption — two areas the researchers flag as still needing attention.

One important nuance: none of these dietary changes were observed at home. The intervention only reshaped what was eaten inside the ECEC centres; parents received information letters and access to educational materials, but there was no structured effort to change the home diet. This matters for anyone designing similar programmes — the daycare setting can shift what happens on its own premises, but influencing the other two-thirds of a child’s daily energy intake (the study found home food provided roughly 63–68% of children’s energy) would likely require a more deliberate, family-facing component.

The Climate and Biodiversity Payoff

Perhaps the most striking part of the study is what these dietary shifts meant for the environment. Using an established Finnish model that estimates the climate and biodiversity impact of food per unit of dietary energy, the researchers found that the climate impact of food served at the intervention centres fell by 11.3% between the start and end of the ten-month period, compared to the control centres. The biodiversity impact — a measure of how food production affects land use and species loss — dropped by 9.6% over the same period.

To put this in context, the researchers note that a comparable Danish daycare study found a 15% reduction in carbon footprint through food-service-level changes, so Finland’s 11.3% sits within a plausible and encouraging range for what systemic menu change can achieve in similarly structured settings. At the same time, the authors are candid that even after the intervention, the climate impact of the children’s diet remained above the “planetary boundary” threshold proposed by the EAT-Lancet Commission — a reminder that thoughtful menu redesign is a meaningful step, not a complete solution, toward a genuinely sustainable food system.

What This Means for Schools and Educators

For institutions working in early education — whether in Finland or applying Finnish-inspired approaches elsewhere — the FoodStep study offers a few practical takeaways:

  • Co-creation matters. The menu changes were not simply dictated to kitchens; they were shaped together with food service staff, educators, and municipal decision-makers, which the researchers suggest helped build commitment and smoothed implementation.
  • Food education multiplies impact. Pairing menu changes with classroom-level food education appears to have supported both the practical rollout and children’s acceptance of new dishes — the amount of food waste did not increase despite the new menu.
  • Ten months is enough time to see change, but not enough to know if it lasts. The authors are clear that longer-term studies are needed to see whether these dietary shifts are sustained once children move on from a given centre or programme.
  • A sustainable diet in early childhood education does not require sacrificing nutrition. This may be the single most reassuring finding for parents and administrators alike: children ate more legumes and local fish and less red meat, without any compromise to their protein, vitamin, or mineral intake.

Conclusion

The FoodStep study makes a compelling, evidence-based case that a sustainable diet in early childhood education is not just an aspiration but an achievable, measurable outcome — one that can be reached through relatively modest, well-designed changes to menus and daily food education, without any cost to children’s nutritional wellbeing. As more countries look to their own early education systems as levers for climate and health policy, Finland’s ECEC centres offer a concrete, tested example of what that transition can look like in practice.

Source:Åkerlund, M., Kyttä, V., Meinilä, J., Pietilä, A., Korhonen, T. E., Vepsäläinen, H., Korkalo, L., Kinnunen, S., Niinistö, S., Raulio, S., Forma, L., Erkkola, M., Saarinen, M., & Virtanen, S. M. (2026). The effect of system-level intervention in early childhood education and care on children’s dietary intake and environmental impact of the diet. European Journal of Nutrition, 65(5), Article 216.