Education News – Kristin Decarr
“A new study out of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health has found that getting kids to eat healthier boils down to taste and presentation. Researchers assigned trained chefs to a number of low-income schools in an effort to focus on the eating habits of 2,600 third and fourth-graders in schools both with and without a chef. They found that children who attended schools with a trained chef on staff ate more fruits and vegetables than those who did not. Success was measured by “plate waste,” or the food children left on their plates after finishing their meals. Schools where children ate more of the food served to them saved money, as the chefs were able to put the food they had to use more effectively…The study is the first to look into the long-term impacts that chefs and “choice architecture” have on school lunches, finding that carefully placing healthy options and having a chef on staff seemed to increase children’s consumption of fruits and vegetables, according to Cohen.”(more)