About nine years ago, I was freelancing for a
PR agency working specifically on a large food company account. I supported two programs – one was launching
their new innovative school food service menu items that incorporated 100%
whole grain but maintained the flavor of white bread. At the time, this was considered a huge
breakthrough in school lunch meals. The
second program was promoting their frozen kids meals for back-to-school
season. This latter item was incredibly
unhealthy with high fat, sodium and calorie values. It was this moment that got me interested in
kids and nutrition. Here we had one of
the country’s largest food companies with the ability to really improve the
nutrition values of their products aimed at kids, and they’re only implementing
these benefits across select items. Why
not incorporate the whole wheat technology that we’re promoting into their
other products so as to provide some sort of nutritional benefit? Perhaps I was naïve being just out of school
thinking that if a company discovered something that made their products more nutritious,
they’d incorporate it across their portfolio.
It’s been interesting to see this recent shift in nutrition
& wellness and especially the skeptical look at nutrition in schools…this
movement, coupled with the greater transparency and engagement with corporations
(thanks to social media) will hopefully ensure that experiences like I had will
happen less and less frequently.
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