25 Wellness Tips

Concerns about healthy food and overall well-being are here to stay. So what exactly is working for non-commercial operators in the struggle to promote wellness? We spoke to operators to get 25 tips from their successful health and wellness programs.

Bring the classroom to the cafeteria: We have an intern program that has helped me develop a nutrition education program/promotion for this upcoming year. In grades K-5, we’re doing a coloring contest, grades six through eight will do a nutrition label essay contest and grades nine through 12 will do a healthy recipe contest. The students will have to look at what we’re serving and talk to the foodservice workers to be able to compete in the contests. For example, for the recipe contest, the students will have to get our recipes and nutritional content from the kitchen and compare that to the foods they are eating at home. Then they’ll have to figure out how they can make the food at home as healthy as the school food. I think bringing that education into the cafeteria will be a lot of fun.

—Michelle Perkins, food service supervisor, Okeechobee County (Fla.) School District

Teach healthy dorm recipes: We have started an educational video series of “dormable recipes,” which are quick and healthy recipes that students can make in their dorm rooms using only a microwave or other basic equipment allowed in the dorms. We’ve done videos on whole-grain pita pizzas, banana split oatmeal and a skinny Buffalo chicken dip.

—Lindsay Wilson, R.D., dietitian, University of Texas, Austin 

Help customers to make the right decision: We really want the healthy choice to be made by the students, so we focus on putting the information out there but not forcing it on them. Our Zoutrition program offers all of the nutritional information for our recipes online, which can also be accessed via a mobile app. The system allows students to build their meals and know what they are consuming. They can also filter by allergen or other dietary needs like vegetarian and vegan meals. The app version of this has been incredibly successful — in August it was downloaded around 6,000 times. We don’t want to put nutrition information too much in their faces because there is some research that shows that can have an adverse effect, such as on students with eating disorders. Everyone has his/her own definition of healthy, so the best we can do is provide education on the basics and then allow them to make their own decisions.

—Michael Wuest, marketing manager, University of Missouri, Columbia

Encourage flavored water: We’ve done a lot with teaching people that they can flavor water on their own. We offered flavored water samplings such as water flavored with citrus, cucumber and berry.

—Rebecca Crotti, R.D., Healthy Selections coordinator, Geisinger Health System, Wilkes Barre, Pa. 

Encourage produce consumption: This past year we launched the Take Action for Health campaign for our staff, which is a program from the Network for a Healthier California. I really liked it because the program was ready to go. You just need to customize it to your operation. We decided to focus on increasing fruit and vegetable consumption. The program lasted 12 weeks and participants tracked their produce consumption during those times as members of teams. Each week, each team member worked toward his/her goal and if he/she met the goal four or more times during the week, then he/she was eligible for either a weekly incentive or a larger incentive at the end. The weekly incentives included things like a carrot pen, tomato seedlings, a free Naked Juice or a free lip balm. Or they could bank the weekly $3 value for the end of the incentive period where they got a grocery gift card. At the end of the campaign, we had 12 teams (85 employees) finish. The results indicated that in every case the total intake of fruits and vegetables was greater in the final six weeks than in the first six weeks. 

—Linda Adams, R.D., director of sustainability and nutrition for Sodexo, University of California, Davis 

Seek feedback to build wellness program: Be proactive in reaching out to your students and staff in a variety of ways to be sure you are giving them the wellness programs they want. We have a staff member go out and talk to students and staff about what they want to learn about. Some of them might want to focus on cooking healthier comfort foods, or students might want to learn how to cook healthy and quick meals in their dorms. We provide education based on what they are requesting. We also use Survey Monkey to conduct surveys and meet with different student groups on campus to find out what everyone wants in their wellness education. 

—Terry Baker, university dining services director, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater 

Invest in employees’ health: We partner with our health center for our Healthy Workers Program. We have a lot of employees who aren’t full time so they don’t have health benefits. We work with the health center to provide some health services for these employees. We give the health center some money out of our budget to take care of these employees so they can also get discounted prescriptions, etc. We also host health clinics a couple of times a year. If we don’t have healthy employees, we can’t do our jobs. 

—Sister Maureen Schrimpe, quality coordinator and dietitian, University of Maryland, College Park 

Athlete feeding: Our school is probably about 60% athletes, so we launched the Fuel the Athletes program in conjunction with the football team. It is based off MyPlate. Basically we are trying to educate the athletes to follow the MyPlate recommendations of filling half their plate with vegetables and fruits, a quarter with whole grains and a quarter with lean protein. The program also talks about fueling before, during and after exercise. We came up with cool flyers that we distributed to the athletes and we have diagrams at each station that reinforce smart plate building. A lot of times in the past athletes would come in and they’d be so ravenous that they’d just pile their plates up with huge mounds of food. Now they know how to build plates that will fill them up in a healthy way.

—Josh Martin, executive chef for Sodexo, Menlo School, Atherton, Calif.

Train chefs on wellness program: We have a program called Healthy 100. It’s all about helping people understand what lifestyle habits can help them live to be 100 years old. We have a training program for our chefs called Healthy 100 Certification Training where we help them understand how to create recipes that fit the program. We explain the criteria (fat under 35%, fewer than 700 milligrams of sodium and saturated fat between 7% and 10% of total calories) and we ask them to develop five recipes that fit the criteria. We have more than 200 recipes in the system. Our marketing department developed a logo to denote these items in the cafeteria.

—Sherri Flynt, R.D., manager, Center for Nutritional Excellence, Florida Hospital, Orlando 

Integrate MyFitnessPal: Like many schools we encourage customers to track their caloric intake using MyFitnessPal. We actually added QR codes to the majority of our items so when students are using the MyFitnessPal app on their phones, they can just scan the item and it’s automatically placed in their daily food diary. This has been so successful the women’s basketball team approached us to train their athletes on how to use the program. They are doing an experiment to see how eating healthier will affect the team’s performance.

—Anthony Zapien, marketing manager for Sodexo, St. Mary’s College, Moraga, Calif.  

Focus on all areas of wellness: We have a program for the entire housing and foodservice department called Well-being: The Five Essential Elements. It’s based on Gallup research. The program focuses on well-being in five different areas: success in your career, socially, financially, physically and in the community. The concept is based on if you are successful in all those areas then you will achieve true well-being. The nutrition part of the program falls into the physical aspect. We just started the program so I was asked this summer to start providing nutrition information for our staff. Not knowing exactly what to focus on, I started with general nutrition information such as how to read a nutrition label, organics, natural foods, GMOs and a little bit on food safety. I wanted to see where the interest was. It was a small group of people, but it was very successful, so much so that they’ve asked me to do more classes throughout the year.

—Lauren Heising, R.D., coordinator for sustainable dining, University of Colorado, Boulder 

Incorporate spices, vinegars and herbs: A big thing for us is to lower salt content by using more spices, vinegars and fresh herbs. Cooks are trained to follow recipes, so salt is controlled. We use a lot of basil and tarragon to flavor food instead of salt. Since this is Texas, I’m also really into using hot sauces, which are usually vinegar based, and salsas. Our topping bars always include pico de gallo because it is low in fat and high in flavor. We’ve also replaced heavy sauces with lighter herb- and chili-based sauces in many of our recipes.

—Robert Mayberry, campus executive chef, University of Texas at Austin 

Implement mindless portion control: Portion control is huge for us. We looked at the nutrition content of, say, the muffins we were serving and we found that by reducing the size of the muffins by just one ounce, the item dropped 100 calories. Plus, customers didn’t really notice the change in size. So we’ve done a bunch of things like that. We had a 5-ounce bagel and we dropped it to a 4-ounce bagel. We had a 12-inch wrap and we dropped it to a 10-inch one. 

—David Hill, area manager, University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H. 

Identify salt: We’ve challenged our chefs to rethink their salt-to-taste habits. We want them to remember that there are lots of way to add flavor to a dish other than the default of salt, such as acid and spices. So we’re working with our chefs to understand where salt is being introduced along the prep process. For example, does it go in the marinade, when finishing the sauce and/or does that dish have olives and capers in it? If so, you’re introducing salt in three steps of that process. So we want to reduce the number of places where we are introducing salt. We’re also spending some time teaching the chefs to respect that every person’s salt threshold is different. We want the chefs to be OK leaving some of the seasoning up to the guest. It’s difficult for chefs because they want the dish to be perfect when they serve it. They need to understand that if someone adjusts the salt at the table, it doesn’t diminish their culinary talent in any way.

 —Terri Brownlee, R.D., national nutrition manager, Bon Appétit Management Co.

Request healthy alternatives from vendors: In Oklahoma oven-fried chicken is a staple of the diet. It’s so popular you can’t eliminate it from the menu, but we wanted it to be healthier. So we asked our vendor to find a product that could work to make that dish healthier. The vendor found an oven-baked chicken that actually looks like fried chicken. So it has the same kind of coating and flavor profile, but we don’t have to fry it. We bake it in the oven. The students don’t really know the difference, but it’s a healthier choice. So utilize your vendors’ resources to find healthy alternatives to mainstay products.

—Terry Baker, university dining services director, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater 

Market healthy beverages: We’re working on a healthy beverage initiative. We just had a conversation with our vending company so it will place low-calorie or no-calorie items at eye level in the machines. As your eye moves down, the calorie counts in the beverages will increase. Your regular sodas will be on the bottom just to make it a little bit tougher to find. The same theory is going to go for our grab-and-go cases in the cafeteria.

—Rebecca Crotti, R.D., Healthy Selections coordinator, Geisinger Health System, Wilkes Barre, Pa. 

Tailor your message: One thing I’ve really noticed with nutrition education with our staff versus students is that our staff, which tends to be a lot older than our customers, is focusing on different nutrition issues. The staff is more concerned with chronic disease issues. The students don’t really care about it a whole lot. The bigger issue for them is eating disorders and eating healthy. That’s why I think it’s important to tailor your message to your audience.

—Lauren Heising, R.D., coordinator for sustainable dining, University of Colorado, Boulder 

Use interns: We really try and take advantage of our [dietetic] interns. We have them create wellness tip table tents, which have been very successful. The tents feature tips such as how to eat healthy at a picnic during the summer months. The info always ties into whatever month it is. The interns gather all the information for us. They also are responsible for creating wellness walls for the employees, which feature wellness information, cooking tips and exercise ideas. They produce those in English and Spanish.

—Sister Maureen Schrimpe, quality coordinator and dietitian, University of Maryland, College Park

Extend an invite: We extended an invitation to our local restaurants to let us identify items on their menus that classify as part of our Healthy 100 program, which consists of meals that meet certain nutrition criteria. We had more than 20 restaurants submit recipes. We’ve had a tremendous amount of interest in this. We’re trying to take our healthy program out of our hospitals and into the community.

—Sherri Flynt, R.D., manager, Center for Nutritional Excellence, Florida Hospital, Orlando 

Color code for easy guidance: The biggest impact for us has been expanding our color-coding system. We color code everything green, yellow or red based on its nutritional content. We also color code gluten-free items with blue. It gives everyone an easy reference point. We do it everywhere now, not just the utensils on the serving line. There are colored dots on the packaging for grab-and-go items and the menu items on our digital display board are written in green, yellow, red or blue. There are also handouts all over the café that show what all the colors mean from a nutritional standpoint.

—Damian Monticello, corporate hospitality services manager, Florida Blue, Jacksonville, Fla.  

Activate a wellness committee: Like many schools we have a student wellness committee, but I’ve heard we’re a lot more active than other districts. We try to meet at least twice a year but sometimes we meet up to four times. We discuss nutrition, nutrition education and physical activity. We assess our progress based on a campus assessment tool. In between meetings, I’ll send out surveys to see how things are going. After the second meeting I collect all of the data. I submit that data to the state, which requires progress information on our program. Then I talk about areas that we are going to work on in the district. Recently, the committee worked on implementing a K-Fit program for grades five, seven and nine. It tracks students’ physical activity throughout the year.

— Jill Funk, nutritionist, Shawnee Mission (Kan.) School District 

Feature celebrity chefs’ healthy recipes: Many peers have celebrity chefs come to campus and many schools offer recipes from home, so we wanted to look for a different twist on that. We wanted to engage our chefs, so we asked each chef in each operation to adopt a cookbook and throughout the school year they feature recipes from that book. It’s called Cooking by the Book. In the resident dining halls, every other week they do a full menu from the cookbook. In the past couple of years, I’ve asked them to look at chefs who have focused on healthier foods and vegan cooking. It’s fun for our chefs and gets some different types of healthy items into the menu mix.

—Tim Dietzler, director of dining services, Villanova University, Villanova, Pa. 

Show, don’t just tell: We believe in showing how to be healthy, instead of telling. This manifests in several ways including our UNH Wildcat Plate, which is a plate with graphics printed it on it. The graphics are modeled after MyPlate. We partner with Healthy UNH, a department tasked with making the university the healthiest university by 2020. Healthy UNH has a Healthy Eating Guide on its website that features a map of all the dining halls and shows what is healthy in each location. It drives back to our website to see the full menu for that day. On our own website, our dietitian shows how to compose healthy plates. This year we’re working on doing more cooking demos to show the students different combinations like a watermelon salad with feta and mint. We want to show them things that have a lot of flavor.

—David Hill, area manager, University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H. 

Make healthy the default: One of the big things we’re working on is structuring the café so the healthy choices become the default items. For example, a customer will have to ask for the less healthy option. The default will be whole grains, dressings on the side, etc. Another great example is the snack items near the cash registers. We’re moving away from the old-school thinking of impulse desserts and candy in that area. Instead, we are putting housemade granola snacks or fruit there. Our clients are very encouraged by the choices being there.

—Terri Brownlee, R.D., national nutrition manager, Bon Appétit Management Co.

Focus on texture and color: We do an Under 500 calorie meal, which is made from recipes that have been approved by a registered dietitian. I think that selling that meal all comes down to the way it looks. People eat with their eyes first. To make it look as appealing as possible, we really focus on bringing those fresh ingredient colors to the forefront. The same goes for our new approach to our salad bar. We started using more upscale ingredients in our composed salads, such as quinoa, farro and tabbouleh. For example, we do a kale and avocado salad with sunflower seeds and cranberries, as well as a grilled corn, quinoa, feta and tomato salad—those feature lots of textures and colors. I’ve been serving between 75 and 100 people at the salad station every day.

—Ryan Deutsch, regional chef for CulinArt, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, New York