5 things: Study suggests school meal reforms helped decrease child BMI

In this edition of 5 Things, Food Management highlights five things you may have missed recently about developments affecting onsite dining.

Here’s your list for today:

Changes to school nutrition standards that pushed more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products significantly decreased kids’ and teens’ body mass index after the standards were implemented in 2010, according to a new study that comes out as the United States again considers updates that would put more limits on added sugars and sodium in school meals. Published in JAMA Pediatrics, the study followed 14,121 US youths ages 5 to 18 from January 2005 to March 2020 and didn’t include data following widespread school shutdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Read more: Changes to US school meal program helped reduce BMI in children and teens, study says

The University of Notre Dame student senate has passed a resolution calling on Campus Dining to provide free cooking classes to students. “Campus Dining struggles to maintain an adequate workforce to fully staff the dining halls and efficiently operate the kitchen facilities,” Senator Connor McCloskey said while reading the resolution. “Student workers already employed at both North and South Dining Hall have expressed an interest and desire to learn more about the kitchen facilities and cooking procedures at the university to meet the need for more workers and to complete additional professional training and development.”

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Read more: Senate passes resolution calling upon Campus Dining to provide cooking classes to students

Corporate dining management firm Eurest is working with PhD students at the University of Oxford in England to explore the impact of social norms on how consumers choose what they eat in a workplace restaurant—and whether they can be nudged into more sustainable choices. The impact of peer choice and peer review is well known in business, but Eurest wants to discover whether clever marketing messages, which signpost vegan and vegetarian meals as being popular, can steer people towards healthy and sustainable diets..

Read more: University of Oxford and Eurest study social norms in workplace restaurants

Hybrid corporate catering and cafe provider Zerocater has announced that it will be expanding its technology enabled corporate cafeteria solution to ten additional markets including its first international market in Canada, after successful operations in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City where firms like Datadog, Splunk and RobinHood are customers. After raising its Series C funding of $15 million, the company says it will also continue to invest in the AI and machine learning capabilities it uses to personalize daily cafeteria and catering menus for the companies it feeds based on the tastes of their employees.

Related:5 things: University sued over food-allergen-related death

Read more: Zerocater Raises Its Series C To Build The Future Of The Corporate Cafeteria For The Hybrid Workplace

Central Park’s storied Loeb Boathouse restaurant is set to reopen this summer under a still-yet-to-finalized deal to give it a new operator: Legends Hospitality, which already operates concessions at Yankee Stadium and which will get a 10-year deal to operate Loeb Boathouse pending final approval in March by New York City’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee. Under the new contract with the city, Legends intends to commit $3.2 million in capital investments and $250,000 for structural maintenance improvements to the boathouse, which first opened in 1872 but was closed last October with previous operator Dean Poll citing rising labor costs and “costs of goods” as reasons for the move.

Read more: Central Park Loeb boathouse to reopen in summer under Yankee Stadium concessions vendor

Bonus: FM On Demand with Tara Fitzpatrick: Sam’s Club chef leads like a lion, roars with responsibility

Contact Mike Buzalka at [email protected]