Lunch Line Redesign

On October 21, the New York Times printed an Op-Ed piece on ‘Lunch Line Redesign.’ The piece was written by two members of the Cornell University faculty, and illustrated with an interactive design by Joe McKendry. The article was based on observations and experiments they had conducted “in cafeterias at high schools, middle schools and summer camp programs, as well as in laboratories…”


Authors Brian Wansink and David R. Just work at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell. Dr. Wansink is the John Dyson Professor of Consumer Behavior there.

According to them,

A smarter lunchroom wouldn’t be draconian. Rather, it would nudge students toward making better choices on their own by changing the way their options are presented. One school we have observed in upstate New York, for instance, tripled the number of salads students bought simply by moving the salad bar away from the wall and placing it in front of the cash registers.

Here are some of their conclusions to easily redesign lunch lines to get our children to eat healthy.

1. Place nutritious foods like broccoli at the beginning of the line, rather than in the middle, increased the amount students purchased by 10 percent to 15 percent.

2. Putting apples and oranges in a fruit bowl rather than a stainless steel pan, more than doubled fruit sales.

3. Moving the chocolate milk behind the plain milk led students to buy more plain milk.

4. A “cash for cookies” policy – forbidding the use of lunch tickets for desserts – led students to buy 71 percent more fruit and 55 percent fewer desserts.

5. Creating a speedy ‘healthy express’ checkout line for students who were not buying desserts and chips doubled the sales of healthy sandwiches.

6. Giving healthy food choices more descriptive names – for example, ‘creamy corn’ rather than ‘corn’ increased their sales by 27 percent.

The full article is here.