$2 millions bucks down the drain. The AP reports:
Federal officials are turning to psychology in a new approach to get kids to choose healthier foods in the school lunch line.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is giving $2 million to food behavior scientists to use marketing tricks to encourage kids to pick fruits and veggies over cookies and french fries.
Some of the ideas include hiding chocolate milk behind plain milk, putting the salad bar near checkout, placing fruit in pretty baskets and accepting only cash as payment for desserts.
Studies by Cornell University researchers have found these tactics work, and Cornell will start a new child nutrition center to test more of these methods.
Let me tell you something. My kids would crawl over the plain milk bottles to get at the chocolate milk. In fact, my kids would crawl over shards of broken plain milk bottles to get to the chocolate milk. What they’d probably do is lay down the contents of the salad bar over the broken milk bottles in order to cushion their feet as they crawled to get to the chocolate milk and cookies.
Look I’ve got five kids. I don’t want them to eat a lot of junk so I don’t give them a lot of junk. I don’t give them the choice between a Suzy Q or an apple. I don’t ask them if they want milk or soda.
I have a brilliant idea. If schools want to stop kids from buying chocolate milk and cookies at the cafeteria line STOP SELLING THEM!!! There, for my brilliant idea do I get the $2 million?
October 12, 2010 at 9:44 pm
The nice ladies in the cafeteria work for the public schools who are governed by a democratically-elected board. Thus, this is all YOUR fault for not voting in your local school board election.
— Mack
October 12, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Great idea Mr Archbold!
– Z.D. Hayden
October 13, 2010 at 12:02 am
I can totally relate to your kids, and it cracks me up that the clowns behind these brilliant psychological "tricks" think that hiding the chocolate milk would actually work with kids who definitely prefer that over the white milk (which, I think, would be most kids). Using the salad bar contents to cover the broken glass bottles is a great idea, too. For all we know that lettuce has already seen more action than 100 or so kids using it as a cushion to get to something relatively appetizing.
The simple solution obviously eludes these clever strategists (yet another black hole for our tax dollars, I guess). I'd love to hear their excuse for not simply removing the junk food they don't want kids to eat. Or do they just tell each other, "Well, kids are going to eat junk food whether we want them to or not, so let's give them a safe place to eat it in"? After all, that works so well with the "safe sex" programs. I'm not equating junk food with condoms; just wondering how these people think.
October 13, 2010 at 3:53 am
Warning: LONG POST
I used to be a school chef at my kids' Catholic school. In my six years there, I found that children WILL eat good food it looks tastes and smells good.
The key is to use ONLY fresh, REAL ingredients, make them like you would at home, and make sure it isn't hospital food. NOBODY likes to eat such bland food, and if you try to give it to kids, they simply will NOT eat it.
The food that is usually served in school cafeterias is NOTHING like what I've described above. Everything is processed, and NOBODY really COOKS. They HEAT UP the already processed items.
All the "meats," all the "potatoes," and all the "sauces" are made with synthetic everything, full of (unneeded) sugars, salts and preservatives. It's quite revolting, in fact. But, oh…it's "low fat" don't you know! Blech. Yeah, it's low-fat, all right. And low taste, too. And low nutrition.
No, if schools want the kids to eat good food that's good for 'em, they need to stop hiring hacks who don't know how to COOK. You don't have to have a chef trained at the CIA, but you should have one who can take a home recipe and multiply it out by a few magnitudes. Do THAT, and it won't matter if the little tykes eat some cookies and chocolate milk 'cause they will have gotten some good nutrition to go along with the treats.
Speaking of treats…I remember one day, the school gym teacher was complaining to me that we sold teeny tiny bags of chips (and I mean teeeeeeny bags). We also offered the "low fat" baked variety, which usually had to be tossed because nobody ever bought them. Anyway, she's going on and on, and I finally picked up one of each and said, "Look. Look at the ingredients in the real chips. Potatoes, vegetable oil, salt. Now look at the "healty" ones." Well, the "healty ones" had an an ingredient list that looked more like the contents of a well-stocked chemistry set. I said to her, "If you want your grandchildren to eat this…go right ahead and give it to them. I'd rather my kids ate the ones with potatoes, vegetable oil and salt."
She didn't have much of a reply.
Regards,
PS: Most school lunch programs are pre-paid and include the main meal and a drink. Snacks are almost always paid for with cash sent in by the parents. If the parents are OK with the snacks, what business does the school have overriding them?
October 13, 2010 at 3:57 am
Oops! Forgot to mention that we offered fresh fruit (FRESH, not bedraggled-looking), and a huge salad bar with many available toppings every day. Both the fruit and the salad bar were pretty much gone by the end of the day. Leftover lettuce was ALWAYS discarded. Two-day-old salad just didn't cut it in my kitchen.
Regards again,
October 13, 2010 at 3:58 am
So it appears the "Just Say No" campaign has been scrapped altogether. Funny, it still works at our house!
October 13, 2010 at 4:09 am
Works at our house, too, Jennifer. I like to tell my kids, "It may be 2010 out there…but in here, it's 1954."
Regards,
October 13, 2010 at 8:34 am
Got to agree with you on this one Matt! As long as the free market gives people the chance to make the wrong choice, they will chose for themselves! I'm with you: this is one more example (of which there are many) of why this capitalist system has got to go!
October 13, 2010 at 9:36 am
Chocolate milk is pretty much a lost cause– I don't know about other folks, but I know the taste of milk turns my stomach. The ONLY time I got milk that didn't come with cereal, it was chocolate, and rarely that. (There's this amazing, delicious thing called "cheese"….)
To echo Jenny, make sure the food doesn't go "glorp" when it's put on the tray, and maybe kids will eat it. Make sure the rabbit food isn't slimy and discolored, and maybe they'll eat it.
I can remember many mass-produced meals (yay, Navy!) where the meat was soaked in fat and dry as a bone, the salad was more speckled than my freckled arm, the broccoli was gone, the potatoes wedges were mushy, the milk could be smelled from fifteen feet away…but the carrot cake dessert was perfect, sweet and light with a creamy topping.
Heck, make it so that the folks who do the menu have to eat there AFTER the first rush, maybe it'll improve.
October 13, 2010 at 6:04 pm
"Heck, make it so that the folks who do the menu have to eat there AFTER the first rush, maybe it'll improve. "- YES! And not just the cooks- do you ever see the admin eating in the cafeteria?
October 13, 2010 at 6:08 pm
One of the few things the Navy does right is require that the XO eat from the enlisted mess decks.
It's not always honored, but the notion is there.
(On a side– good cafeteria ladies are precious; my high school had and still has some of the best mass cooks I've met, and I don't say that just because they're family friends. A lot of our teachers did eat in the cafeteria, and getting to help was sought after because you got to pick all the goodies.)
October 13, 2010 at 6:12 pm
So, The Dutchman, people shouldn't be able to choose for themselves? God gave us free will, and well intentioned idiots took it away.
Nice.
October 13, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Mr. Siekerski:
Should the market allow people to chose ANYTHING they want? Should people be able to buy sex from prostitutes, narcotics, pornography, human body parts, babies? Should we allow children to buy alcohol and cigarettes? Or is there a higher moral value than an unhindered market?
October 13, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Last time I checked food wasn't killing us as fast as the lack of OUTDOOR exercise. We take away recesses, make them sit in desks all day, and then give them enough homework to choke a horse. By the time they are finished with their homework it's to late to go outside and play so they sit in front of the TV and vegetate. When I was young I ate plenty of junk food, but I also played outside about 3 hours a day not including recess. O by the way, I work in the school system and have 3 kids of my own. My husband and I are thinking of home schooling because I think kids need to be kids and not little robots.
I agree that offering kids sweets all the time is not necessarily a good idea but I also don't think taking away their choices is a good idea either. If your never trained to make good decisions then you never learn how to make them. Practicing decision making skills is also an important skill. As a child, I once made a choice to eat two entire boxes of chocolate covered cherries and I reaped the consequences. A severe tummy ache and vomiting all evening. It was a great lesson and one I will never forget.