New York City’s successful school food initiatives
I was pleased to see the article in last Sunday’s New York Times about New York City’s efforts to improve school food. The story focused on PS 56, a school that serves low-income kids in Brooklyn.
The article describes the food revolution that is taking place in New York City schools, one described in an excellent report by Hunter College faculty.
In singling out PS 56, the writer chose a good example.
I visited there a year or so ago, and wrote about it at the time under the title “School food: it can be done!” Its cafeteria is an astonishing place. The food smelled good. It tasted good. The staff cared whether the kids ate what they cooked.
When I asked whether this school was typical, the answer was “not exactly.” How come it worked? Everyone pointed to the principal, Deborah Clark-Johnson, who believes it’s important to feed kids well and who totally supported the cafeteria staff.
So one way to improve school food is to recruit caring staff.
Another, for older kids, is to encourage them to make better choices. An article in the Boston Globe discusses Cornell professor Brian Wansink’s work in this area:
But it turns out that students are susceptible to the same marketing strategies that grocery stores have been using for years. Several experiments have shown that children will be more likely to eat items if they see them early in the lunch line and find them attractive and convenient to pick up. Putting fruit in a good-looking bowl works. So does putting a salad bar in a prominent place. Calling your carrots “X-ray vision carrots” can double sales.
I’ve discussed Professor Wansink’s work on lunch line redesign in an earlier post. It raises an interesting question: is this the right strategy, or should schools just serve healthy food in the first place?
This is worth discussion. Want to weigh in?
Leave a comment
Follow Marion
Next public appearance
New York: 92nd St Y, Tribeca
This is a conversation about 101 Classic Cookbooks, 501 Classic Recipes (Rizzoli Books, 2013), with Clark Wolf, Marvin Taylor (curator NYU Fales Library), Rose Levy Beranbaum (author, The Cake Bible), and Madhur Jaffrey (actor and author). 7:30 p.m. 92ndY Tribeca, 200 Hudson St, Price $15, RSVP: here
Comments
I think it would be best to serve healthy food right off the bat, so kids are exposed to healthy options even if they aren’t exposed to or aren’t able to afford them at home. But employing Prof. Wansink’s tactics would certainly be a good option, if serving only healthy food is not.
Prof. Wansink’s methods are a clever, cute way to encourage healthy eating, as long as you don’t care about education. Calling carrots “x-ray vision” vegetables is nothing more than a marketing strategy (albeit a good one) which removes the possibility for conscious thought in the decision. What are kids attracted to? The actual carrots, or their (falsely) proclaimed advantages?
While our culture seems to be heading towards a health kick, and perhaps more people in the future will choose fruits and veggies over potato chips and burgers, I can only hope it will be for the right reasons. I fear that healthy foods will fall into the same advertising traps as junk food, and, while we will have a significantly leaner population, one that still flounders in nutritional ignorance.
I vote for using both practices during a transitional phase to get kids eating better, then phasing out the marketing babble. They have to be weaned from these techniques like any other addict.
How about awareness programs along with redoing the lunchroom? I taught my kids about product placement techniques and read labels to them while they were still sitting in the shopping cart. I also severely limited their television–they grew up to be label-reading skeptics in spite of watching lots more tv than they were reared on.
As a recent high school student I can say that the foods must taste good or students will not eat them. It does not matter if they are highly nutritious and packed full of vitamins and minerals. If the food is not fresh and appealing students will not purchase it. Most students at my school packed potato chips and cookies and just purchased ice cream from the lunch line because of the notoriously awful taste of the school food. It seems self defeating to serve foods that the students do not like. We had dry carrots, undercooked whole wheat pizza, and overripe fruits. Step one is getting the students to eat school lunch at all. There is a stigma that has to be overcome. However, I feel that if students were provided with truly good tasting nutritious options, they would choose to buy them.
These strategies don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Why not do both?
@Meghan
You could not be more right in your analysis. Oh that the learned could learn from you.
@Anthro
What is the difference between marketing and an awareness program? Isn’t marketing done to make people aware of things?
Being naturally curious critters, young kids are naturally drawn to foods that sound fun and interesting. This is why parents call things like peanut butter on celery w/ raisins “ants on a log.” The same concept goes into calling carrots “x-ray vision carrots.” This isn’t lame marketing. It’s how you get kids interested in food. They’re gonna be curious why carrots are labeled “x-ray vision.” It’s a perfect moment to educate them about carrots and what makes them important to a healthy diet. Once you have them drawn in, then you have make sure the food is appealing to the eye and tastes good. Providing healthy food in school cafeterias means nothing if the kitchen staff doesn’t know how to properly cook fresh food. I love broccoli, but I’m not eating it if it’s overcooked. It’s disgusting, and I don’t expect kids to eat overcooked broccoli either.
@Nutty_Observer: You’re gonna have to explain to me how fresh, healthy foods are “in danger” of being over-marketed? How the heck does that happen? A carrot is a carrot, not one of a thousand different kinds of candy bar. It’s a rich source of vitamin A, potassium, Vitamin C, and fiber. The carotenoid compounds help support healthy vision. In fact, I’ve been told by my optometrist to eat foods rich in carotenoids (α-carotene, β-carotene, lycopene, and lutein) to help prevent macular degeneration which runs on both sides of my family.
Marketing healthy foods is all about educating people on WHY they are good for you. For most adults, education along w/ learning proper cooking is usually all that’s needed to hook them in. For kids, it’s another matter, because they don’t understand logic–or how to use it, so they need cute, funny handles to get them interested. Kids learn best through games and play, so treating food in this manner–making it fun for them–is the best strategy.
@ Roxanne Rieske – I completely agree with your comments! There is virtually NO marketing at all towards fruits and vegetables. We have to work with what people’s behaviors/habits are instead of trying to go at it from the other side, telling people what to do.
I’m actually a School Nutrition Associate and I develop/oversee state-level nutrition education programs that target low income populations in the schools that have high participation in the national school lunch.
My programs are funded by USDA and depend on National School Lunch, which is funded by USDA and states that “nutrition education should be added”.
Doesn’t it seem strange that USDA/School Lunch/ School Boards suggest nutrition education but won’t let us into most schools? In fact, we have to practically BEG to get into the schools and are only in 1 or 2 per county in our state. USDA also funds the “Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program” … which for some reason is NOT mandated in every school either. Indeed, their mission is “to introduce students to fruits and vegetables they would not otherwise be exposed to, such as kohlrabi, kiwi, starfruit…”
You know what vegetable they were doing the day I visited one of the school’s that has the FFVP ?
Cucumbers with Ranch Dressing.
On top of this, Obama/Government decided to cut/pull our funding mid-year and put it towards more “food assistance” than our “nutrition education”. Let’s give the hungry/obese more food but take away their education on what to do with it.
Ah! I think the more we can get fruits and vegetables to be interesting, the more we can gain motivation for education behind it.
Love Roxanne’s comments and agree with everything she wrote, but I have to second what Meghan had to say as well.
I am a parent of an elementary school child. I try to have lunch with him in the cafeteria once a month. I do not have the perfect diet by any means, but am a vegetarian who happily eats tons of veggies normally – yet many times when I go to the school cafeteria, I find myself throwing out some or most of the veggies I grab. They are canned. The color is unattractive. They are flavorless. And they are trying to compete with comparatively yummy things like pizza, mac and cheese and chicken nuggets. I don’t blame the kids for eating the pizza and tossing the veggies!
This may be a bit off topic, but I think it is related – another issue I see in our school is the lack of time the children have to eat. Our kids have 30 minutes for lunch. This includes the time it takes to walk in from their classrooms, stand in the lunch line and find a seat. By the time they are seated, they may have 10 minutes to eat, and are rewarded for good lunch time behavior by being able to leave the lunch room for recess 5 minutes early. All this does is encourage the kids to scarf down their food as fast as they can, exacerbating their eating problems.
Brava to Meghan, Roxanne, and Michelle for thier comments!!! And an invitation to Professor Nestle to visit other NYC public elementary schools – those doing good things, but those not mentioned in NYTimes articles – ever. These schools exist, work through issues of under/ over-cooking of cafeteria food, and recognize tireless efforts of kitchen staff on a local level. The more positive examples we get out in the open, the more local princiapls will want to keep-up with the Jones’es…
[...] them drawn in, then you have make sure the food is appealing to the eye and tastes good. Providing Healthy Food In School cafeterias means nothing if the kitchen staff doesn’t know how to properly cook fresh food. I [...]