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Healthy theme park meals?

Healthy side dish, beverage alternatives are embraced by Disney World visitors

Date:
December 22, 2015
Source:
Cornell Food & Brand Lab
Summary:
When meals at Disney World restaurants came with a fruit or vegetables instead of fries, about half of diners opted to keep the healthier option, a new study has demonstrated.
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When meals at Disney World restaurants came with a fruit or vegetables instead of fries, about half of diners opted to keep the healthier option! A new study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research shows that nutritionally improved kid's meals at the 145 restaurants located at Walt Disney World, Orlando, Florida were embraced by diners.

Starting in 2006 the Walt Disney Company began improving the nutritional quality of kid's meals by replacing the default sides and beverages of French Fries and regular soda with healthy defaults of low fat milk or water and either fruit or vegetables. Customers could still request soda and fries if they chose to "opt out" of the healthy default items. To better understand the acceptability and nutritional impact of making these dramatic changes Disney recently provided kid's meal sales data for the years 2010-2012 to the University of Colorado Anschutz Health and Wellness Center for detailed analysis. The results were dramatic and showed that across all restaurants, 48% and 66% of guests accepted healthy default sides and beverages, respectively. The healthy defaults reduced calories (21.4%), fat (43.9%) and sodium (43.4%) for kid's meal sides and beverages. Disney further reported that improving the nutritional quality of the meals did not affect the consumer cost of the meals.

This research is important because it highlights a voluntary and bold move by a large company to make changes that can help improve nutrition for their customers but that doesn't restrict choice and doesn't increase cost. It makes purchasing the healthier item the easy choice in a way that is a win-win for both consumer and restaurant. "While these results were obtained in a theme park setting they may have broader applicability and may encourage other restaurants to try the opt-out approach for making healthier choices easier for consumers," says lead author, John C. Peters.


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Materials provided by Cornell Food & Brand Lab. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Cite This Page:

Cornell Food & Brand Lab. "Healthy theme park meals?." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 22 December 2015. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151222082014.htm>.
Cornell Food & Brand Lab. (2015, December 22). Healthy theme park meals?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151222082014.htm
Cornell Food & Brand Lab. "Healthy theme park meals?." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151222082014.htm (accessed March 28, 2024).

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