Photographs in Lunch Tray Compartments and Vegetable Consumption Among Children in Elementary School Cafeterias

If It's Useful and You Know It, Do You Eat? Preschoolers Refrain from Instrumental Food

“…Emphasizing the taste benefits, assuming they are credible, or even not mentioning the benefits at all, is superior to making the food instrumental to achieving certain goals in terms of encouraging consumption and creating a positive experience. This conclusion is consistent with Reicks et al (2012), who find that merely placing pictures of vegetables on school lunch trays, without any accompanying messages, increased consumption of vegetables.…”

“…With increasing rates of obesity (Brownell and Horgen 2004;Chandon and Wansink 2012;Hill and Peters 1998) and childhood obesity (Hedley et al 2004;Troiano and Flegal 1998; though see Ogden et al 2014), understanding how to help children eat healthier is crucial (Birch 1999), especially from a young age (Cunningham, Kramer, and Narayan 2014). Prior research suggested several interventions, including increasing the accessibility of certain food items (Hearn et al, 1998;Just and Wansink 2009;Reicks et al 2012) or using appropriate role models (Birch 1980). Our research suggests that when encouraging children to eat healthy (or neutral) food, making the food instrumental may backfire.…”

Nudge to Health: Harnessing Decision Research to Promote Health Behavior

“…Some similar techniques have also been used with health behavior. Reicks, Redden, Mann, Mykerezi, and Vickers (2012) conducted a field study in a school cafeteria. For some children, photographs of vegetables were placed in wells in the lunch tray, presumably conveying a social norm that one was expected to place vegetables in that portion of the tray.…”

Current Trends in Childhood Obesity Research

“…In another study, adolescent participants using a special plate designed by their peers selected less food overall and more fruits than those using a standard plate, and participants with higher BMIs selected a greater amount of healthful food when using the special plate [53]. Reicks et al [54] found that, with the addition of green bean and carrot photos in food tray compartments, twice as many students selected green beans (14.8 % vs. 6.3 %) and three times as many selected carrots (36.8 % vs. 11.6 %).…”