Eat Healthy, Win a Prize

FM Staff

With the basic shopper loyalty program approach, the more you buy, the more points you build up toward a premium. The Lynnfield, MA, school system has come up with a similar strategy to motivate kids to choose more healthy options for lunch.

Lynnfield's program, called Imove, was developed by local fresh produce distributor Costa Fruit & Produce Co. It offers kids stamps or points for making healthy choices in the cafeteria lunch line. They can then trade the points for prizes such as sportswear and sports equipment, including teeshirts, sports bottles, jackets, back packs, duffel bags, skateboards and even mountain bikes.

The lunch choices that qualify-for points derive no more than a quarter of their calories from fat, and no more than 10 percent from saturated fat. Imove meals, such as the Chicken Caesar wrap, encompass about 750 calories total.

At Lynnfield, the program sparked a 20-percent increase in lunch counts as kids maneuver to accumulate enough points to secure their desired prizes. Meanwhile, they are also eating healthier meals (standard fare like burgersand fries remain on the menu for those who prefer such choices).

Costa supplies over a thousand K-12 schools across New England and is looking to expand the program to other systems outside Lynnfield, says President/CEO Manny Costa.