One of the behaviors identified by the Center for Disease Control that is most strongly related to morbidity and mortality is unhealthy dietary behaviors. Because most of these unhealthy behaviors begin early in life, the burden of early prevention education falls largely on health educators in the school system. The Michigan Model Curriculum (MMC) is designed to teach students the knowledge and skills needed to make healthy choices. In the state of Michigan, over 80% of the school districts report using the MMC for health education. The purpose of this research was to determine the impact of the MM Nutrition Curriculum on knowledge, perceptions, self-efficacy and eating behaviors in middle school students. The study was conducted in a large metropolitan setting and approved by the IRB. The participants for this study were divided into two groups: an intervention group (n = 396) and a control group (n = 164). A MMC trainer trained the physical education (PE) teacher in the use of the curriculum and the PE teacher subsequently taught the curriculum to students in the intervention group. A 61 item valid and reliable questionnaire was used to determine pre-post differences. It consisted of questions assessing eating habits, knowledge, perceptions and self-efficacy. A subset of 16 of these specifically related to MMC content. Each set of questions was totaled giving a subscale score which were analyzed separately using a 2 groups (Intervention vs. Control) by 2 times (pre-post) ANOVA with repeated measures on the last factor. There was a significant main effect of time and a group x time interaction in the questions directly related to the MMC, self-efficacy and the knowledge subscales. As expected, the intervention group scored higher than the control group at post. There was also a significant main effect of group in the subscale behaviors. Subsequent post-hoc analysis revealed that the intervention group was more likely to eat fruits, vegetables and less likely to eat junk food than the control group. There was no significant difference in the subscale perceptions. The results of this study suggest that the MMC, delivered by trained professionals resulted in significant positive changes in both knowledge and behaviors regarding nutrition in middle school children. This curriculum effectively taught students the skills they needed to make healthy choices and the students responded by making those choices. Keyword(s): health education K-12, middle school issues, nutrition