how do you like them apples?

Brian Wansink became the Jamie Oliver of behavioural economics by accident. A group of New York schools wanted to boost consumption of fresh fruit amongst their students, and so they asked Wansink - a Cornell economist - to calculate how much they should drop the price of apples to sell 5% more of them. When Wansink considered the problem, he came up with a better idea. He told the school to buy a fancy-looking bowl, fill with fruit, and place it in a prominent, well-lit place. Fruit sales doubled. Even stranger: one school, misinterpreting Wansink's 'well-lit' advice, shone a desk lamp on the fruit. Sales nearly quadrupled. Since then Wansink has come up with more ideas to nudge kids towards better eating:

He’s found, for example, that children are less likely to eat ice cream if it’s stored in an opaque cooler instead of a clear one — and that children are more likely to choose plain skim milk if chocolate milk is a little harder to reach. Schools he’s worked with have shown increases in lunch attendance and the number of children choosing such healthy foods as fruits and vegetables. And because the changes are inexpensive, they have the potential for widespread appeal. Most important, he says, his strategies don’t drive kids out of the lunchroom by removing foods that they like.

I used the word nudge deliberately, of course. Wansink's work is unpopular with food reformers, who aren't keen on this guy invading their field, and who believe that the only way to change students' habits is to force schools to remove bad foods from the school menu. It's a debate that embodies the tension between two different approaches to social policy: the traditional 'hard' paternalism of liberal reformers, and the 'soft' paternalism (or 'libertarian paternalism') advocated by behavioural economists.

Personally I'm amazed that nobody has yet suggested my preferred solution to this problem: toffee apples.

(More on Wansink here, from the Boston Globe.)

Comments

[Insulated Cooler]

Makes sense, most people are lazy and will eat whatever is at hand. Out of sight equals out of mind. If ice cream is hidden by a hidden cooler kids won't even know it exists.