Talking Nutrition at NIH

FM Staff

The employees of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, are tough foodservice customers. "You have to be nutritionally accurate with them because they know what they're talking about," says John Crawford, food service program manager.

Eurest, the foodservice management company that is the major dining services contractor for the sprawling complex, had initially implemented a series of healthy meal options last year but met a lot of questioning from staffers who wanted more information than was conveyed by the standard signage.

So Eurest decided to reboot. The company worked with NIH representatives to come up with language that was "not so marketing focused but more nutritionally accurate," Crawford says.

The effort was a success. Eurest launched a new Balanced Choices healthy dining program earlier this year and "it has been very well received," Crawford says. In fact, there has been a 12-percent bump in business and no negative comments, he adds.