To conduct and support innovative research that applies the principles of behavioral economics in order to find strategies that improve children’s food choices and support consumption during school meals and to disseminate these research-based strategies to help Food Service Directors in K-12 schools and policy makers to design sustainable lunchrooms that subtly guide smarter choices.
These solutions can include overlooked low-cost/no cost lunchroom changes – environmental changes – that can lead a student to unknowingly make healthier lunch choices without knowing that they are being "nudged" by the way the lunchroom is designed. By conducting and sponsoring these research and outreach activities, our Center provides proven win-win strategies that are easy and profitable for schools to implement and that help students make healthier foods choices.
The Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs (BEN Center) runs an annual award program that seeks to support research involving the applications of behavioral economics in child nutrition programs, particularly those focusing on the National School Lunch Program.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is a professional membership organization that works to promote high-quality early learning for all young children, birth through age 8, by connecting early childhood practice, policy, and research.
The Center on the Developing Child’s diverse activities align around building an R&D (research and development) platform for science-based innovation, and transforming the policy and practice landscape that supports and even demands change. We do this because society pays a huge price when children do not reach their potential, because half a century of policies and programs have not produced breakthrough outcomes, and because dramatic advances in science are ready to be used to achieve a promising future for every child.
