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Strategic Food Placement: A Key to Healthier School Meals Simple Changes That Drive Better Nutrition Choices By Dee Carroll, Carroll Services, Inc.
Three minute read
In Brief: This article provides strategies for school cafeterias to enhance healthy eating habits among students through effective food placement and choice architecture.
F ood placement—strategically posi- tioning items to influence customer selection—has long been used by restaurants and grocery stores. Nutrition experts are now applying this technique in school cafeterias to encourage healthier student eating habits. A New Concept for Lunchrooms Food service practitioners are increasingly adopting behavioral economics—the study of psychological factors influencing purchasing decisions. Research shows that young people, like adults, follow two core principles when making food choices: 1. You cannot force students either to eat or to avoid specific foods. When people feel pressured to act in a certain way, they rebel and choose to do the opposite. The fancy term for this is “reactance”. 2. When students believe they have a choice, even among limited options, they’re less likely to resist and more likely to make beneficial decisions. Behaviorists call this “self-attribution.”The perception of autonomy creates ownership, improv- ing satisfaction and sustaining long-term dietary changes in school environments.
An Exciting Development The USDA emphasizes behavioral econom- ics in school food service, funding research on student food choices through Team Nutrition and the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The Smarter Lunchrooms Movement applies these principles to promote health- ier eating nationwide. Global researchers’ findings on improving student eating behaviors continue shaping school food service practices across the country. Traditional approaches to improving student nutrition—banning unhealthy foods or forcing healthy choices—have proven ineffective, with students either eating forbidden items off campus or discarding unwanted healthy options. Creative food placement offers a more promising strategy for encouraging better food choices. Consider these research- backed approaches: 1. Rather than removing unhealthy drinks or snacks completely from campus, make it harder for students to access them. Move vending machines outside the cafeteria to lower-traffic areas at your school—that way, students have to expend
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