Schools trick kids into eating healthy

Parents may let their kids subsist on ice cream, Red Bull, and beer, but schools won't. U of M researchers recently helped two Hopkins elementary schools trick kids into eating--and liking--more healthful foods.

Kim Ode at the Strib reports that, starting in the fall of 2007, University of Minnesota scientists started stealthily adding more and more whole-wheat flour into white bread served to students at Gatewood and L.H. Tanglen until, by the end of the school year, kids were eating breads made with 90 percent whole-grain flour.

My favorite part of the piece was an explanation by Renee Rosen, a doctoral student in the U's Nutrition Department, of how data was collected to measure the success of the whole-wheat flour introduction.

The kids' consumption was measured by Rosen and other nutrition students who sifted through the garbage bins at the two schools and weighed all the discarded bread. "It was rewarding yet, um, kind of disgusting at times," Rosen said.

I thought that only happened when kids accidentally threw away their retainers...