Behavioral Economic Concepts to Encourage Healthy Eating in School Cafeterias: Experiments and Lessons from College Students

Changing small factors that influence consumer choice may lead to healthier eating within controlled settings, such as school cafeterias. This report describes a behavioral experiment in a college cafeteria to assess the effects of various payment options and menu selection methods on food choices. The results indicate that payment options, such as cash or debit cards, can significantly affect food choices. College students using a card that prepaid only for healthful foods made more nutritious choices than students using either cash or general debit cards. How and when individuals select their food can also influence food choices. College students who preselected their meals from a menu board made significantly different food choices than students who ordered their meals while viewing the foods in line.

Brian Wansink, Ph.D., is a professor at and the director of the famed Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, where he is a leading expert in eating behavior. He is the author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, as well as three professional books and more than two hundred peer-reviewed journal articles. He was the 2011 12 president of the Society for Nutrition Education, and in 2007 he was presidentially appointed as the USDA executive director in charge of the Dietary Guidelines for 2010 and the Food Guide Pyramid (MyPyramid.gov). Wansink lives with his family in Ithaca, New York, where he enjoys both French food and French fries.