Smarter Lunchrooms: Using Behavioral Economics to Improve Meal Selection

1. A guide to how schools can make small changes that can help children make healthier choices in the lunchroom without even knowing it. GOAL: Identifying low-cost solutions that do not impact revenue, but have a great impact on children's nutrition. Smarter Lunchrooms: Using Behavioral Economics to Improve Meal Selection Just, David R. and Brian Wansink (2009), “Better School Meals on a Budget: Using Behavioral Economics and Food Psychology to Improve Meal Selection,” Choices, forthcoming.

2. What is Behavioral Economics? GOAL: finding the balance between profit, participation, and costs Behavioral economics: combines the behavioral models of psychology with the decision models of economics to help highlight how biases in perception, memory, or thought processes may influence purchasing decisions How does this apply to you? You can use behavioral economics to guide children’s choices in a way that is subtle enough that they are unaware of the mechanisms, but effective enough to help them make healthier choices. Just, David R. and Brian Wansink (2009), “Better School Meals on a Budget: Using Behavioral Economics and Food Psychology to Improve Meal Selection,” Choices, forthcoming.

3. Change: Result: Increase in fruit intake by as much as 70% Move the Fruit: place fruits near cash registers Surprising Salad: introduce a salad bar into the cafeteria Increase reimbursable lunch participation by 21% You Choose Veggies: offer students a choice of at least 2 options Can increase consumption by as much as 91% Keep the Trays: use trays instead of individual plates and glasses Trayless cafeterias reduce nutrition while increasing waste Change the Defaults: make fruits and vegetables the default Works well when preferences are ambiguous Cash for Desserts: require students to pay cash for unhealthy items like desserts and sodas Increased sales of nutritious foods and decreased sales of less nutritious foods Just, David R. and Brian Wansink (2009), “Better School Meals on a Budget: Using Behavioral Economics and Food Psychology to Improve Meal Selection,” Choices, forthcoming.

4. Total School Lunch Participation Prove It! What Does This Mean? Total school lunch participation increased when the salad bar was introduced into the school cafeteria. Cash-Option vs. Debit Only Selections What Does This Mean? Students at schools with the cash-only option buy more nutritious foods than students at the schools that offer debit card only for payment. Just, David R. and Brian Wansink (2009), “Better School Meals on a Budget: Using Behavioral Economics and Food Psychology to Improve Meal Selection,” Choices, forthcoming.

5. Suggestions for How to Make Your Lunchroom Smarter: http://www.smarterlunchrooms.org/pdfs/Suggestions.pdf Video Clips from Consumer Camp 2010 To attend consumer camp next year visit: http://www.mindlesseating.org/consumer_camp.php See What the Cornell Chronicle Has to Say: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Dec09/XrayCarrots.html To Learn More Visit: http://www.smarterlunchrooms.org/ http://www.mindlesseating.com http://www.foodpsychology.cornell.edu Just, David R. and Brian Wansink (2009), “Better School Meals on a Budget: Using Behavioral Economics and Food Psychology to Improve Meal Selection,” Choices, forthcoming. Created By: Lauren Faldet