Objective: To understand rural students’ perception and satisfaction of the Nutrition Improvement Program for Rural Compulsory Education Students (NIPRCES), and to provide basis for promoting students’ participation in the school feeding program and improving the acceptability of school feeding. Methods: In 3 national pilot counties and 2 local pilot counties of NIPRCES, 1 middle school and 1 primary school were randomly selected. Two classes of 2 364 students from grade 4 to grade 9 were randomly selected and investigated with questionnaires. Results: Students were aware of the policy, with 78.9% of the students reported to be familiar with NIPRCES. The awareness rate of students at the national pilot areas was higher than that in local pilot areas(P<0.05). Students showed positive attitude towards NIPRCES. The median score of students’ understandings of the influence of NIPRCES was 20.0 (18.0, 20.0) points. Students in national pilot areas showed a more positive attitude toward the program than those in local pilot areas(P<0.05). Moderate satisfaction was reported in school feeding, 78.7% of students thought that school provided adequate amount of food, and 60.9% of the students enjoyed the food very much. The main reasons for leftovers were too much in amount(27.4%), repetition of food types (22.8%) and food aversions(9.2%). Conclusion Students are quite aware of NIPRCES and show moderate satisfaction in school feeding. The awareness and satisfaction are relatively higher among students in national pilot areas than those in local pilot areas. Health promoting schools should be established and students and parents should be advocated to take part in the program, health education need to be promoted in schools. Experiences sharing between different places could help improve the quality and acceptability of school feeding program.

Objective: To investigate students’ satisfaction on school feeding program in 8 cities in China, and to provide the basis for improving school feeding management and lunch quality. Methods: Multi-stage random cluster sampling method was used to randomly select the second, fifth and eighth-grade students from 67 primary and middle schools in 8 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Harbin, Shijiazhuang, Guangzhou, Changsha, Bengbu and Pinghu. Results: A total of 15 475 students participated in the survey, 15 170(98.0%) of which were valid questionnaires. A total of 13 297(87.7%) students had lunch in school. Twenty-six(38.8%), 14(20.9%) and 27(40.3%) schools served lunch by self-run canteens, custody canteens, and food delivery companies respectively. Twenty-one schools provided milk or yogurt for lunch, accounting for 31.3%. The reported rates of very satisfied, satisfied, moderate, dissatisfied, and extremely dissatisfied among students were 40.8%, 28.1%, 20.1%, 7.3%, and 3.6%, respectively. The satisfaction rate of the eighth-grade students was lower than that of the second-and fifth-grade(56.9% vs 77.1% vs 73.5%). The satisfaction rate among students from schools with self-run canteen was higher than that of custody canteens and food delivery companies(73.8% vs 60.5% vs 66.2%). The satisfaction rate of school lunch is highest in dining surrounding (75.3%), followed by amount of meals(71.6%), food hygiene(71.1%), food combination(65.4%), and the appearance of the food(60.5%), and food taste(55.9%). Conclusion The satisfaction rate of students for school lunch was acceptable. The food taste is the main factor for students’ dissatisfaction. Schools should be encouraged to provide lunch in the self-run canteens with tasty food while meeting the nutritional standard.