Tricks to Get Kids to Eat Healthier at School

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What happens if you give one group of kids a plate of cookies, and the other group the same number of cookies, but cut in half, and tell them all they can eat as many as they want? Decreasing the cookie size led to 25% fewer cookie calories eaten.

“The goal of this study was to help counter…obesity-promoting eating behaviors facilitated by the availability of large portions of [junk food].” And, “[t]he findings suggest that reducing the size of cookies (without altering the total amount of food) decreases children’s short-term energy intake—a…‘‘dietary strategy’’ for guardians to discretely decrease [unhealthy behaviors].”

But, do you know what’s in these things? Partially hydrogenated oil; trans fats. No one should be eating those. In fact, I can think of another “dietary strategy” to decrease kid’s intake—don’t give them any.

Admittedly, easier said than done. Even in the “granola crunchy” Bay Area, when parents and school administrators proposed to ban junk food, it “sent a…faction of parents and teachers into an apoplectic fit.”

In Texas, there was such parental outrage they got lawmakers to pass “a Safe Cupcake Amendment. The amendment, known as Lauren’s Law, ensures that parents and grandparents of schoolchildren celebrating a birthday can bring whatever” the heck they want to school.

Fine. What if you just offered fruit in addition to the cupcakes at classroom celebrations? “To observe student response[s] to the addition of fresh fruit, bowls of fresh, cut-up fruit provided by the researchers were added to the party food contributed by the parents” at half the four kindergarten or preschool celebrations studied. “No special effort was made to encourage students to choose the fruit.” They just put it out there. Would kids actually eat fruit when there was birthday cake, ice cream, and cheese puffs taking up nearly a whopping third of their daily caloric intake? Yes! On average, each kid ate a full fruit serving. Take that, cheesy puffs!

There are entire curricula available now for schools, like Veggiecation, where, for a whole year, classrooms feature a new veggie of the month, “sprinkled with nutrition mantras like, ‘’Fiber equals a happy tummy.'” And, it works! ” The active engagement of students in tasting and rating of vegetable dishes seemed to have contributed to higher consumption of [featured] vegetables.”

One school was able, in some cases, to double vegetable consumption—just by giving them “attractive names.” Elementary students ate twice the number of carrots if they were called “X-ray Vision Carrots,” than if they were “just” carrots, or generically named as the “Food of the Day.”

How about “Power Punch Broccoli, Silly Dilly Green Beans,” or calling broccoli “Tiny Tasty Tree Tops?” Selection of broccoli increased 100%; green beans up 177%.

Conclusion: “these studies demonstrate that using an attractive name to describe a healthy food in a cafeteria is robustly effective, persistent, and scalable with little or no money or experience.” These names were not carefully crafted, discussed in focus groups, and then pre-tested.” They just thought them up. What a concept! And, kids were suckered into eating healthier for months by putting out silly little signs.

Vegetable intake up nearly 100% across the board, while in the control school, without the signs, vegetable consumption started low, and actually got worse. So, why isn’t every single school in the country doing this right now?! Bring it up at your next PTA meeting.

And, if you want to get really bold, you can join the nutritious school lunch revolution, led by pioneering organizations like the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.