The convenience factor

Well... I took a few minutes and wrote the last post about shopping for the girls' track team. I did eventually find a grocery store that accepted the credit card I had and I got so excited to run around the store and fill my cart with lots of good things. I was able to pick up a ton of fruit as well as wheat bread, peanut butter, jelly, and granola bars. I really felt accomplished and felt as thought I was doing something positive for the students in a variety of different ways. First, they would be able to compete better because their stomachs wouldn't be filled with greasy burgers. Second, in a community that is so hard hit by the obesity / diabetes epidemic, I feel as though even the smallest opportunities to model and teach healthy habits are helpful. Plus, of course, healthy food is something I'm passionate about and sharing that feels great.

The kids seemed generally appreciative of the food choices. Especially the fruit. The girls loved the grapes, the apples and the oranges disappeared pretty quickly, and there were a few mumblings about a lack of bananas... good to know... I'll add them to the list. The sandwiches, however, were not a hit. Everyone liked the idea of peanut butter and jelly (some liked the idea of one without the other, you know how it goes...) but because they actually had to assemble their own sandwiches... NOBODY ATE ANYTHING! I was pretty shocked. There were kids who were really hungry by the end of the day and I guarantee that if there had been a cooler full of pre-made PB&J everyone would have gone to town on it. Instead they didn't eat any of it... too much work to make their own sandwich.

I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised, I did just finish reading Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. Clearly, the choices that people make are not always rational, but how do you combat those choices? For example, one could argue that to truly feed yourself a healthy diet, you need to cook. Cooking involves time, work, energy, and... doing the dishes (EEK!). But people are lazy and the many will make their choices based on convenience rather than logic. Does that mean that the new single serving, microwaveable veggies are the best way to convince people to eat healthier? Would a fast food restaraunt that serves "rabbit food" in a quick, convenient way profit and improve America's health?

I don't know. Next time I'm going to recruit some of the free manual labor that I have at my disposal (aka my students) to make up sandwiches in advance.