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Food Coaching is a cafeteria-based program for school nutrition and cafeteria staff to encourage kids to try new foods and eat nutritious school meals. Student Nutrition staff should be trained to learn and employ these unique skills to help students accept and try new foods offered on school meal serving lines. This helps to build relationships with our students and can make eating fun and adventurous for them- opening up a lifetime of health, nutrient balance and overall wellness for them!
Goals/ Objectives of Food Coaching:
Increase the number of kids who taste new foods during lunch in the school cafeteria
Increase fruit and vegetable intake among students during the lunch period
Increase knowledge of food options available at lunch in the school cafeteria
Increase student motivation to try new foods
What it's not!
It's not about pressuring, bribing, or forcing kids to eat fruits, vegetables and new items. Doing this actually makes them less likely to try them.
It's not about telling kids to eat foods because they are “healthy.” Labeling something as healthy often makes it taste worse to kids.
It's not about rewarding kids for eating fruits and vegetables. Offering sweets as rewards for eating vegetables may make them even less likely to eat them.
What it is!
Food coaching is about planting ideas about food, exposure to a wide variety of foods, and a way of talking about foods, that get kids curious about it and encourages happy and adventurous eating of good food! .
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