Nutrikids, But What About Parents?

Most parents send their kids off to school with a bagged lunch or with a few dollars to make their own purchasing decisions in the school’s cafeteria –

Most parents send their kids off to school with a bagged lunch or with a few dollars to make their own purchasing decisions in the school’s cafeteria – keeping their fingers crossed that their child goes for greens instead of fries. Now parents of children in select schools can track their child’s lunch purchases, and nutritional value, with an innovative school food service management system.  
 
Now we’ve all been told for the past twenty plus years that eating healthier and loosing weight is the key to staying healthy; but Americans continue to indulge. Whether it’s exaggerated portion sizes, constant snacking, or clocking in hours in front of the TV, The Lempert Report wonders if parents will be receptive to this information, and if they will even know what to do with it.  
 
Luckily the food service management tool, Nutrikids, provides online educational opportunities for families related to health, nutrition and physical activity.  Parents are able to log in, add money to their child’s school meal account, check past purchases, and among other things, receive general nutrition training. An interesting feature, MyTray, provides parents the ability to view school meal options while learning how food choices contribute to the nutritional quality of their child's diet. Specifically parents can, review school menus, see how making changes to selections makes a nutritional difference and review Nutrition Facts labels or the USDA’s MyPyramid.  Overall it seems like Nutrikids has it covered.
 
Another feature of Nutrikids, MyNutrition, helps children learn about nutrition by linking them to a series of websites with nutrition education games, puzzles, menu planning tips, food pyramid guidance, and more. MyNutrition also encourages parents and children to work together, in activities like the “Family Challenge,” towards leading a healthier lifestyle.
 
The Lempert Report sees an opportunity here for supermarkets to partner with Nutrikids, to help families plan healthful, nutritionally sound, breakfasts and dinners to cook at home.  Parents can plan ahead if they have access to weekly menus, rounding off their child’s day and week with balanced meals.  Providing shopping lists and recipes, the Grocer, Nutrikids relationship seems well suited, while nurturing the customer relationship as well.  
 
A contract with Nutrikids costs just under 80k for the first year, which includes the price of the software. Let’s just hope schools leave some money in the budget for healthy foods in the cafeteria.