Objective: To assess nutrition knowledge and dietary behaviors of seventh graders in nine randomly selected middle schools in Louisiana. Methods: This descriptive study used personal data assistants (PDAs) to administer a pre-validated questionnaire developed from national instruments to 127 seventh grade students from nine randomly-selected schools in Louisiana. Frequencies, Kruskall-Wallis, Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney, and correlation tests were used to assess differences in factors related to nutrition knowledge scores. Results: Misconceptions regarding the Food Guide Pyramid, serving sizes, nutrient content of foods, and diet-disease relationships were identified. Although, there were no significant differences in general knowledge scores based on gender, age, or ethnicity, students who reported discussing nutrition with their parents had significantly higher general knowledge scores (p = 0.02). For most students, reported intakes of fruits, vegetables, and milk and milk products were below recommendations. Applications to Child Nutrition Professionals: This study showed that while participants had a good knowledge of the Food Guide Pyramid food groups, they also had significant misconceptions concerning foods belonging to the milk and fat groups. Students also tended to overestimate recommended serving sizes, and were unfamiliar with diet-disease relationships. PDAs proved to be a user-friendly, efficient means of collecting survey data from middle school students.