RAND Study (cost vs. convenience) in children's consumption of vegetables

Here is the RAND study that has spawned a great deal of press coverage the past couple of weeks.

We can't generalize its findings to the workplace, however...

...It does prod a question. Has anyone seriously looked at the price elasticity of demand at workplace cafeterias for healthy foods? Anecdotally, we know that many corporate cafeterias do subsidize certain menu items over others (tending towards the healthy choices). But how effective is this? Drop an email if you have citations.

Information and Food

A recent CNN article suggests that people are paying greater heed to what they are eating and where it came from. In this case Mad Cow Disease was driving folks to scrutinize where their beef came from and prefering in some cases 'natural beef...'

Whether or not you feel that information about food drives you to making different choices in what you eat seems less important than *having* that option. Think about it. Corporations have knowledge management systems and data cubes that slice and dice for viewing and analysis the operations of companies to the margins. Yet in our own 'operations', often we have only the most rudimentary information available to us about the history of a particular food available to us (vendor/brand reputation, ingredients lists...).

I am not suggesting anything dramatic, at least not now. Perhaps a great deal of this information is already out there awaiting compilation and integration and distributed to your desktop via a handy-dandy lunchtime menu chooser with right-mouse-click drill-down option. Imagine that.

Stay tuned.

Healthy Eating: Managing Improvisation?

Autumn is in the air. Thoughts quicken, and its back to webblogging...

Think for a moment of how food is prepared into dishes. From ingredients dishes are fashioned using recipes that you and your family then eat. Its not a perfect model as many ingredients are eaten directly (whether intended or not) and there is an abundance of ready-made products requiring little assembly.

By and large most families are likely approach the problem of what to stock in the kitchen using simple 'trip-wire' rules based on historically-grounded intuition: "we tend to be able to consume an N ounce jar of X in D days... make sure there is at least 1 jar on hand."

This sort of approach might be augmented with episodes of planning: Wednesday night lets have tuna casserole, Friday is steak night - with mashed potatoes, etc. (So make sure you have the ingredients required for this on hand).

A tight regime of meal planning would help grocery shopping for families, in theory, were it not for the imperfections of life and its logistics:

• involves a great deal of work
  
• people vary their consumption
• serendipity (hey, let's go grab a bite at the mall...)
• etc.

With small groups, individual variations make it hard to plan too closely what to stock and in what quantities, especially when it comes to managing perishables. Using rules such as the one described earlier tends to work well enough for most. When a certain state is noted ("down to last pint of milk") a flag is tripped and an item is added to a list. The limitation is that it does little when you aquire too much of a particular ingredient (and say, its about to go bad).

That is when a process of remedial planning kicks in. So if you just noticed that you are well-stocked in tomatoes and your tomatoes are going soft... Spaghetti Bolognaise tomorrow night, etc.

The difference between corporate kitchens/cafeterias, restaurants and your household is likely the degree to which meals are planned and the sophistication of the applied food purchasing regime. In both places a degree of improvisation is required. The challenge is how to manage that improvisation. Do you look at the 5 ingredients in your refridgerator about to go bad and say "what can i do with this (I have no idea)?" Or do you do something else.

Because our most healthy foods are also are most vulnerable, improvisation in how they are consumed may often be critical for them. If you buy a lot of greens but throw out half of it...

So ask yourself and your workplace cafeteria, how good are you and they at the art of improvisation.

May The Farm Be With You

Its a bit off-topic, or at least off-tone for this site, but there is a point worth making... The Organic Farm Association has released a Star Wars parody featuring organic vegetables and the mantra "may the farm be with you." This blog does not take an official position on organic foods. However, in and amongst the Princess Lettuce humor there is the (artichoke) heart of a serious and worthy point: as a consumer you should take more interest in the foods you eat - what they are made of, where they come from, and the facts reported about them.

This sort of information doesn't have to be made cutely or with flash... but convenience helps. A workplace that featured tidy nutrition/food news cards on cafeteria tables would be one place to start. Something to glance at during a fast (or not so fast) dash through lunch...

The Workplace Juicer

Stephanie over on The Daily Vegetable has a provocative post about the value proposition of vegetable juicers. Were such devices available at work, say along the lines of the coffee maker and the microwave, how many employees would use them? Perhaps not many initially. Perhaps I would be wrong. In any case, however, I have a suspicion that they have the potential to replace the water cooler as the organizational lubricant... if only given a chance. Think of it this way: a useful machine for workplace nutrition and organizational bonding. Try it - an inexpensive experiment. Just be sure to insist that users clean up the machine after themselves.

The Military's Weight Issue

The July 4th Boston Globe reports of a large employer for whom wellness and weight in particular are critical "business" factors - the US Military. There are a couple of noteworthy points here. First, the article cites the breadth of the problem:

Weight issues plague all branches of the military...Thousands of troops are struggling to lose weight, and thousands have been booted out of the service in recent years because they couldn't...One of the biggest worries concerns those not even in uniform yet, however: Nearly 2 out of every 10 men and 4 out of every 10 women of recruiting age weigh too much to be eligible, a record number for that age group...' 'This is quickly becoming a national security issue for us. The pool of recruits is becoming smaller," said Colonel Gaston Bathalon, an Army nutrition specialist.

The article also ID'd an interesting and ironic detail. It pointed out that this is an employer for whom breadth of effort and energy can be marshalled, should it become necessary. The school lunch program was passed, apparently, after WW2 in response to concerns about a under-nourished (and too thin) recruit pool.

It would be interesting to see how this large and "critical-path" employer responds in the years ahead. The Marine Corps solution of recycling its workforce through bootcamp should they check-in at 10% overweight may not generalize to an all-volunteer multi-service force drawn from an increasingly overweight civilian population.

Many times in the past, the US Military has led the way in social change, e.g. racial integration. Perhaps they'll do it again, this time directed towards nutritional awareness and the workplace.

Corporate Synergies

NewsTarget is reporting that the American Diabetes Association is cozying up too closely with corporate sponsors who at first blush might appear at odds with their message ("American Diabetes Association peddling nutritional nonsense while accepting money from manufacturer of candy and sodas").

I am not taking a position here - I suspect these sorts of relationships and their consequences are far more complicated than simple top-level appearances. However, it does raise an interesting question about the nature of the relationships between corporations and "nutritional/dietary" interests and public health: instead importing "nutritional technology" externally - why not grow it internally? Instead of looking to external organizations to provide PR image of nutritional awareness, why not foster it using internal programs?

Food for thought.

Global Perspective

The Seattle Times reports of the "worldwide epidemic growth of diabetes." ("The global diabetes threat"). It too reports that the World Health Organization is "undertaking an energetic program to raise public awareness around the globe about the dimensions of this threat..."

This global perspective on poor nutrtional/dietary practices does raise an interesting question on our perspective of nutrition at the workplace in this day and age. If one of the pervasive qualities permeating international economies and culture is market-driven global capitalism, why not too forward looking practices such as workplace nutrition and wellness? After all, one perspective of the global economy is that its a system that has evolved more-or-less adopting "best of breed" systems and practices to further efficiencies and growth. And as an evolving system, there is always, continued room for change, should it be in its interest...

Consider Ecological Approaches

I recently read an interesting article "The influence of self-efficacy and outcome expectations on the relationship between perceived environment and physical activity in the workplace"(March 2004). It is a scientific article and conclusions and ideas are hedged. However, it does suggest that workplace physical activity interventions based on narrow goal-oriented objectives have only been "modestly successful" in improving workplace activity, and that we ought to consider a broader range of mutually supporting (environmental) factors.

It cites Plotnikoff et al's (ref article) ecological workplace physical activity model and the 6 non-exclusive categories it names:

• Individual (e.g. age, gender, etc.)
• Social (e.g. workplace cultural, and relationships, etc.)
• Organizational (e.g. infrastructure, corporate leadership, etc.)
• Community (e.g. supporting programs outside the workplace, etc.);
• Policy (e.g. corporate policy, etc.)
• Physical Environment (e.g. facilities, etc).
  

I won't extrapolate too heartily the conclusions (I'm not sure, as the authors would seem to agree, that such would be productive). However, I do feel it is fair to say that there is potentially a complex set of relationships between a number of factors that can help improve workplace nutrition programs. In the end I think it speaks towards a holistic approach that is more than just rewards and metrics, but also is also nuturing and supporting and senstive of the overall environment.

The Tofu Effect

I eat a fair amount of tofu. More now than I used to. Tofu seems to be one of those litmus foods often associated with the fringes - not associated with mainstream corporate/public policy nutrition discussions (fyi - $250m/sales -2002). However, my recent experiences with it may suggest an interesting idea for all of us here.

I found that the oriental food store near my house was reselling tofu inexpensively from a local manufacturer. I buy it there in a plastic container with 6 blocks of tofu for a shave less than $3.00. That compares well against individually wrapped blocks in the local supermarket (ranging from $1.30 - $2.30 per block).

I'm hardly a tofu fanatic. I've forgotten about it for months on end before. The important point is that now, when I think of it, I easily drop by this store on a weekend and pick up a container. Then it sits in the back of my refrigerator and I use it as it occurs to me over the next week.

Because it is so available and inexpensive, I don't think twice about it, I don't feel compelled to have to purchase it with a specific plan for its use. Its easy to just do it.

The problem with the supermarket aquisition model - in the old days for me - was not really about the $. It was just if the price was above a certain threshold, I was reluctant to purchase perishable food on "speculation," so to speak. Whereas now, guilt is gone, to my amazement, I find dishes to cook, to use it up, so easy.

The lesson from a corporate health perspective may be a simple one. Perhaps one strategy that is all carrot and inexpensive is to promote or even distribute purchases healthy items in bulk on premises (or nearby). This could be outsourced or handed-off to a third-party. This could encourage employees to alter consumption patterns and eating habits, for the better, off site. At the very least it will raise awareness.

Bulk purchases represent a commitment on the part of employee to *try* to work those food items into their diet. Inexpensive bulk items may encourage employees to take the first step.

Four Traits, 3%

Stephanie over on The Daily Vegetable cites a Michigan Study:

...four lifestyle traits necessary for good health. Only 3% of the
population exhibits all four traits: non-smoking, at a healthy weight, getting
regular exercise, and consuming five or more servings of vegetables every day.
Only 23% of us eat that many vegetables.

It is worth a thought about how in the US at least, corporate workplace and society at large have made great strides in encouraging non-smoker safe environments. Now, it would seem, that some of that same energy should be directed towards encouraging the other three lifestyle traits. 3% is far fewer than we, at the workplace, should settle for.

Workplace Health Promotion: 16:1 ROI

Medical News Today reports on a BYU study that "Workplace Health Promotion Programs Show 16:1 Return on Investment." Interestingly, the advantages acrued to the employer in this study are directed from a reduction absenteeism, specifically:

The study examined the health claims costs and absenteeism of 6,246 employees and retirees from the Washoe County School District in Reno over 6 years. Employees' participation in the school district's wellness program was associated with an estimated savings of more than $3 million in absenteeism costs when compared with nonparticipants.