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. Smarter Lunchrooms: Using Behavioral Economics to Improve Meal Selection 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.

What is Behavioral Economics? 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. 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 GOAL: finding the balance between profit, participation, and costs 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. Surprising Salad: introduce a salad bar into the cafeteria You Choose Veggies: offer students a choice of at least 2 options Keep the Trays: use trays instead of individual plates and glasses Change the Defaults: make fruits and vegetables the default Increase reimbursable lunch participation by 21% Can increase consumption by as much as 91% Trayless cafeterias reduce nutrition while increasing waste Works well when preferences are ambiguous Increased sales of nutritious foods and decreased sales of less nutritious foods Cash for Desserts: require students to pay cash for unhealthy items like desserts and sodas Move the Fruit: place fruits near cash registers Increase in fruit intake by as much as 70%

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. Total School Lunch Participation 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. What Does This Mean? Total school lunch participation increased when the salad bar was introduced into the school cafeteria.

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. See What the Cornell Chronicle Has to Say: edu/stories/Dec09/Xray Carrots.html To Learn More Visit: Suggestions for How to Make Your Lunchroom Smarter: Video Clips from Consumer Camp 2010 To attend consumer camp next year visit: consumer_camp.php Created By: Lauren Faldet