The same thing is happening at Chicago Public Schools with kids and healthy foods, they aren't mixing very well.
Chicago Public Schools stopped serving daily nachos, Pop-Tarts and doughnuts and introduced "healthier" foods for breakfast and lunch.
As a result, district figures show that lunch sales for September through December dropped by more than 20,000 lunches a day.
Students describe the "healthier" food as nasty.
"If they're going to feed us healthy, they need to feed us something good that's healthy," said Mijoy Roussell, a sixth-grader at Claremont Academy who was skipping lunch in favor of a packet of candy. "This food is disgusting, which is why I'm not eating lunch."
For the 2010-11 school year, Chicago Public Schools switched to menus with more whole-grain products, less sodium and lots of vegetables.
And now most cereals offered have less than 10 grams of sugar per serving.
So with all these these changes exceeding the existing U.S. Department of Agriculture meal standards, they also have left a bad taste in the mouths of students.
They have created negative impressions of healthy foods among many students.
"They want us to eat healthy food, but the food has no flavor," sophomore Jacob Hernandez said as he picked at unsalted rice and beans at North-Grand High School. "Last year, they had a yellow Puerto Rican rice. But this year it's all dry, and you can tell they put a lot of stuff in there, but what's the point if there is no flavor?"
We find it interesting that school lunch experts emphasize that healthful options are a lot easier to sell when the food actually tastes good.
Wow, how did they figure that out?
"Cooking flavorful food from scratch is not rocket science," said Kate Adamick, who specializes in revamping institutional food operations.
For example, Chicago Public Schools forbids the use of salt in the preparation of vegetables or other fresh food offered to students, although the district allows high levels of sodium in the processed foods it serves.
The results of this policy could be seen on recent visits to lunchrooms, where trays of boiled broccoli, zucchini and a pea-carrot mix sat virtually ignored by students. Many of those who did take the vegetables left them on the tray uneaten.
To convert kids to healthier meals, the experts say, "first you have to get the (healthy) food to taste good, and then you have to look at other ways of reducing salt in other parts of the menu, like by taking out processed foods."
Because of the terrible lunch sales, the district brought back a processed spicy chicken patty sandwich as a daily offering in all district high schools.
About 90 percent of the students in the lunch line have been choosing the spicy chicken patty for their meal "because everything else tastes nasty," said junior Mariah Crespo.
"I am baffled and disappointed by the tendency of 21st century adults to give in to children's preferences when it comes to food," Adamick said. "We know that teens prefer pornography magazines over the classics, but we don't give them copies of Playboy in literature class. Adults are present in children's lives to be role models, disciplinarians and caretakers, not to be popular."
Yes, Kate Adamick actually said that.
Another genius, Brian Wansink, a professor at Cornell University who specializes in eating behavior, said abrupt changes to kids' meals often cause a negative reaction. His Smarter Lunchrooms research project has developed several strategies that help students make better choices through psychology and marketing.
He advises putting healthier foods at the front of the line. He also said he has seen 25 to 35 percent increases in healthy food consumption when nutritious items were given fun names like "big bad bean burrito" or "tender broccoli."
No matter what you call it, if it tastes like crap it will leave a bad taste in your mouth...
