Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to improve adolescents' nutrition knowledge and to examine the effect of interventions component to improve adolescents' nutrition knowledge. Design/methodology/approach - The study design was multi-factorial with repeated measures, at two points in time, of dependent samples from three schools, which were randomly selected from 15 middle schools in Miyun County, Beijing, and then randomly assigned to control school or intervention school. The instrument for baseline survey was a 14-item and for follow-up survey was a 26-item, self-administered, structured questionnaire, designed in Chinese. Findings - Students' nutrition knowledge improved significantly in intervention schools after intervention compared with controls. The extent to which students felt that peer support activities were helpful and that what they learned in class about nutrition was helpful, was related to their resultant level of nutrition knowledge. Originality/value - To the authors' knowledge there have been no previous studies which explore the effect of specific intervention components on levels of nutrition knowledge among adolescents. Keywords Knowledge, Schools, Adolescents, Curriculum, Nutrition, Eating