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BCBS Health News (6/19)
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Inter-Faith Food Shuttle Farm Stand is open for the summer
Jun 16, 2017 | News & Observer
By Brooke Cain
The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle has long been a force of good in Raleigh, redistributing unused food from restaurants, grocery stores and other retail businesses to programs and organizations that feed the hungry. -
Sweet sizzlin' beans! Fancy names may boost healthy dining
Jun 19, 2017 | Charlotte Observer
By Lindsey Tanner
Researchers tried a big serving of food psychology and a dollop of trickery to get diners to eat their vegetables. And it worked. -
A veggie by any other name may actually get eaten
Jun 19, 2017 | CNN
By Victoria Knight
Labeling food with indulgent words may make people feel more satisfied when eating, says another study
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Inter-Faith Food Shuttle Farm Stand is open for the summer
Jun 16, 2017 | News & Observer
By Brooke Cain
The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle has long been a force of good in Raleigh, redistributing unused food from restaurants, grocery stores and other retail businesses to programs and organizations that feed the hungry.
The nonprofit group has expanded its mission – and it’s geographical range – in recent years, reaching seven counties and adding programs that teach culinary job skills as well as healthy eating and cooking.
The organization has also established three gardens in Raleigh and Durham – gardens that grow food to be distributed by the shuttle while teaching members of the community important skills.
▪ The Camden Street Learning Garden is located in a Southeast Raleigh food desert and has 32 community beds, a 420-square foot market garden, a food forest, a 6,000-gallon rainwater catchment system, two beehives, a greenhouse, a vermi-compost bin, a composting facility and a kitchen classroom.
▪ The Food Shuttle Farm, on Dover Farm Road in Raleigh, is a 10-acre urban production farm that grows fresh produce for distribution at Food Shuttle Mobile Markets. That site also has a farm stand, which reopened last week selling fresh produce and eggs from noon-6 p.m. Fridays and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays during the summer. The Food Shuttle Farm Stand accepts cash, check, credit or debit cards and SNAP EBT.
▪ Recently, the group turned an empty lot in Durham into the Geer Street Learning Garden. That site has 12 raised vegetable beds, a fruit tree garden, a cob pizza oven, small greenhouse, two beehives, a compost system, pollinator gardens and areas for community gardens.
The Inter-Faith Food Shuttle relies on donations and volunteers. To learn more or to help out, visit foodshuttle.org.Cary yard sale benefits senior clubs
Cary Senior Center holds its annual yard sale Saturday.
The sale raises money for the Cary Senior Center and six Cary senior clubs: Cary Garden Club, Volunteer Sewing Group, Senior Technology Education, Bharatiya Senior Citizens of NC, XYZ and AARP. Funds raised in the past have helped pay for software updates for the computer lab used by the Senior Tech Education program; yarn, sewing machines and other materials for the Volunteer Sewing Group; and the planting, growing and harvesting of vegetables (donated to the Dorcas Food Pantry) by the Cary Garden Club in the community garden.
The sale runs 7:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. at the Cary Senior Center, 120 Maury O’Dell Place, Cary.
Admission to the sale is free and purchases are cash only. Service animals are allowed. Parking is in the Cary Senior Center lot, with overflow in the Bond Park Community Center lot and Fields 5/6/7 in Fred G. Bond Park.
For more information, search “Senior Center” at townofcary.org or call 919-469-4081.
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Sweet sizzlin' beans! Fancy names may boost healthy dining
Jun 19, 2017 | Charlotte Observer
By Lindsey Tanner
Researchers tried a big serving of food psychology and a dollop of trickery to get diners to eat their vegetables. And it worked.
Veggies given names like "zesty ginger-turmeric sweet potatoes" and "twisted citrus-glazed carrots" were more popular than those prepared exactly the same way but with plainer, more healthful-sounding labels. Diners more often said "no thanks" when the food had labels like "low-fat," ''reduced-sodium" or "sugar-free."
More diners chose the fancy-named items, and selected larger portions of them too in the experiment last fall at a Stanford University cafeteria.
"While it may seem like a good idea to emphasize the healthiness of vegetables, doing so may actually backfire," said lead author Bradley Turnwald, a graduate student in psychology.
Other research has shown that people tend to think of healthful sounding food as less tasty, so the aim was to make it sound as good as more indulgent, fattening fare.
Researchers from Stanford's psychology department tested the idea as a way to improve eating habits and make a dent in the growing obesity epidemic .
"This novel, low-cost intervention could easily be implemented in cafeterias, restaurants, and consumer products to increase selection of healthier options," they said.
The results were published Monday JAMA Internal Medicine.
The study was done over 46 days last fall. Lunchtime vegetable offerings were given different labels on different days. For example, on one day diners could choose "dynamite chili and tangy lime-seasoned beets." On other days the same item was labeled "lighter-choice beets with no added sugar," ''high antioxidant beets," or simply "beets."
Almost one-third of the nearly 28,000 diners chose a vegetable offering during the study. The tasty-sounding offering was the most popular, selected by about 220 diners on average on days it was offered, compared with about 175 diners who chose the simple-label vegetable. The healthy-sounding labels were the least popular.
Diners also served themselves bigger portions of the tasty-sounding vegetables than of the other choices.
Turnwald emphasized that "there was no deception" — all labels accurately described the vegetables, although diners weren't told that the different-sounding choices were the exact same item.
The results illustrate "the interesting advantage to indulgent labeling," he said.
Dr. Stephen Cook, a University of Rochester childhood obesity researcher, called the study encouraging and said some high school cafeterias have also tried different labels to influence healthy eating.
"It shouldn't be a surprise to us because marketing people have been doing this for years," Cook said.
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A veggie by any other name may actually get eaten
Jun 19, 2017 | CNN
By Victoria Knight
Labeling food with indulgent words may make people feel more satisfied when eating, says another studyPutting descriptive indulgent words in front of vegetables -- such as "dynamite," "rich," " sweet sizzlin' " and "tangy" -- may help adults take and eat more of the food group, according to a study published this week.The study, published in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine, found that giving vegetables certain descriptive labels caused more students and staff at Stanford University to choose vegetables during lunch -- even though there was no difference in the way the vegetables were prepared.The vegetables were labeled in one of four ways: basic, healthy restrictive, healthy positive or indulgent.Are Germans leading a vegan revolution?The basic description just listed the vegetable name, like corn or zucchini. The healthy restrictive category used words such as reduced-sodium corn or lighter-choice zucchini. Descriptions like vitamin-rich corn and nutritious green zucchini were used for the healthy positive. And indulgent was reserved for descriptions like rich buttery roasted sweet corn and slow-roasted caramelized zucchini bites.Brad Turnwald, a doctoral psychology student at Stanford University and lead author of the study, found that making the labels indulgent increased the number of people who chose to put the vegetables on their plate, as well as the amount of vegetables consumed.Vegetables labeled indulgently were 25% more likely be taken than basic-labeled. There was an even bigger difference in the numbers between healthy positive, healthy restrictive and indulgent. Thirty-five percent more people took indulgently labeled vegetables over healthy positive-labeled vegetables, and 41% more took indulgently labeled vegetables over those labeled healthy restrictive.The healthiest ways to cook veggies and boost nutrition"We think that the indulgent labeling aligns more with people's motivations," Turnwald said. "That they're looking for something tasty when they want to eat. And that's why it works."The study was conducted over the course of an academic quarter at Stanford, in a large cafeteria serving about 600 people during weekday lunches. Research assistants counted the number of diners taking vegetables by dressing as members of the cafeteria staff. The amount of vegetables diners took from self-serve containers was weighed by actual members of the cafeteria staff.Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, said the study confirmed what he and others have found in similar studies done at elementary schools, high schools and adult cafeterias: Changing the descriptions of vegetables can make us more likely to both choose them, and eat them.'Ugly' vegetables: Trendy, tasty, and good for you, too"People taste what they expect to taste," said Wansink, who was not involved in this research study. "If we think food is crunchy, we rate it as crunchy afterwards. So if you make food look more exciting or sound exciting, people are more likely to take it."Turnwald emphasizes that no matter the wording, the vegetable descriptions were always accurate."We're certainly not trying to trick people into eating more vegetables," he said. "What the labels did in this case was shift people's attention to the indulgent and tasty characteristics of the vegetables, instead of focusing so much on the healthy components of the vegetables. No matter what condition it was, we were always making true statements about the vegetables."One limitation of the study was that Turnwald and his research team could not measure how much of the vegetables the individual diners actually ate. However, a previous study by Wansink found that people usually eat about 92% of the food they serve themselves. Turnwald suggested that another study could attempt to measure the amount of vegetables diners ate by weighing what was left behind in the trash, though he admits that could be tricky.Join the conversation
See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.Turnwald's adviser, Alia Crum, an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford, is doing even more research on mindsets. In a previous study, she found that people who thought they were drinking an indulgent milkshake were more physiologically satisfied than those who thought they were drinking a healthier shake.For Turnwald, changing mindsets through new labels is key to more people eating vegetables."We really need to think about this as a way to start changing the culture," he said. "The way that we talk about healthy foods -- it shouldn't be so negative and so depriving and so focused on health. It should be focused on the flavor and the taste, because that's how we talk about all the other foods that we know and love."
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