The Tastiest School Lunch Ever?

By Carol Church, Writer, Family Album

Reviewed by Agata Kowalewska, PhD, Department of Family, Youth, and Community Sciences, University of Florida

If you were to win the lottery today, which type of assistant might you think about hiring for the rest of your life? Would it be a masseuse, an in-house personal trainer, a driver, or maybe your own personal chef? I know a lot of us would choose the latter.

Chefs on the Lunchline?

Although it’s hardly the same thing, some Massachusetts public school students in first through eighth grades recently did get the chance to have their school lunches revamped by professional chefs. The goal was to use the chefs’ culinary skills to increase students’ selection and consumption of healthier food items. Meanwhile, other students’ lunchrooms were overhauled using so-called “smart cafe” methods, which change up the design of the cafeteria to make healthy foods more appealing and easier to access. (Other selected schools continued with their regular lunch programs, to serve as a comparison.)

How They Did It

The chefs didn’t come into the schools with lobster tails and filet mignon, of course. Instead, they used low-cost foods typically available to schools, concentrating on making the meals tasty and appealing without increasing salt or sugar. They also taught culinary skills to cafeteria staff.

The “Smart Cafe” Alternative

Meanwhile, in the “smart cafe” intervention, researchers redesigned the lunchrooms to encourage students to eat healthier–without changing how food was cooked. Vegetables were offered at the start of the line (when plates are empty), fruit displays were made more attractive, signage supporting healthy eating went up, and milk displays were changed to encourage students to choose plain milk in place of milk with added sugar.

Changes Over Time

So how did these interventions work? During the first 3 months of the “chef intervention,” more students began to select vegetables in the lunch line. Although per-child consumption of vegetables didn’t go up, overall consumption did (because more children were choosing to take and eat a veggie).

But the researchers also thought that it might take longer than three months to see real change, so they measured again at seven months in. By this time, students at the chef schools were also taking and eating more fruit, and taking and eating more vegetables on a per-child basis.

Chefs More Effective than Redesign

What about the kids in the “smart cafe” schools? These students took more fruits and more vegetables than children in schools that didn’t make any changes, seeming to show that the redesign did indeed help kids to select more veggies and fruits from the lunch line. However, unlike the children in the chef schools, the students who only received the “smart cafe” changes didn’t end up eating more fruits and veggies on a per-student basis.

Patience is a Virtue

So what can we learn from this study (other than yes, we all want our own chef?) First, it’s interesting to note that the changes the chefs instituted took a while to really take off. So it may be some time before healthy menu changes catch on. Second, although the design-based changes were fairly effective in enticing students to select more healthy foods, changing the taste of food seemed to work better at getting students to actually eat it.

So in the end, a combination of approaches, and a willingness to be patient, would probably have the best chance of helping students eat healthier when that lunch bell rings. After all, we all want our food to taste good.

Curious about what those chefs were cooking up? To see the actual recipes used by the chefs in the experimental schools, check out Project Bread’s Let’s Cook Healthy School Meals Cookbook here. They sound absolutely delicious!

References:

Cohen JF, Richardson SA, Cluggish SA, Parker E, Catalano PJ, Rimm EB. Effects of Choice Architecture and Chef-Enhanced Meals on the Selection and Consumption of Healthier School Foods: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Pediatr. 2015. 1;169(5):431-437.

Photo Credits: monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Thinkstock

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Posted: May 7, 2015


Category: Health & Nutrition, Work & Life
Tags: Healthy Foods, Nutrition And Food Systems


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