Total Lunchroom Makeovers: Using the Principle of Asymmetric Paternalism to Address New School Lunchroom Guidelines

Andrew Hanks, David Just and Brian Wansink

No 123388, 2012 AAEA/EAAE Food Environment Symposium from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: A key goal of the Healthy, Hungry-Free Kids Act of 2010 is to ensure that children have access to healthy foods in schools. While the new policy mandates that healthy items must be included on the lunch line—and even that children must take certain foods—there is concern both over whether children will choose to eat the healthier fare, and what the ultimate cost may be to schools that comply. We propose a series of behavioral nudges–the total lunchroom makeover–that may help lead children to make healthier choices at little cost the schools in accordance with the goals of the new legislation.. We report the results from a field experiment in which a series of nudges lead to significant increases in the consumption of fruits and vegetables—a substantive step in the right direction.

Keywords: Food; Consumption/Nutrition/Food; Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/123388/files/H ... nchroomMakeovers.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaeafe:123388

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.123388

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2012 AAEA/EAAE Food Environment Symposium from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().