Episode 137: Rudd Center Studies Various Food Issues

UConn’s nationally-renowned Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health promotes solutions to food insecurity, poor diet quality, and weight bias through research and policy. Marlene Schwartz is the director of the Rudd Center and joins us on the podcast. She is also a professor of Human Development and Family Studies. Marlene talks about how the Rudd Center performs research and advocates on these various issues. She also gives parents helpful hints on how to get their children to eat healthy foods and good tips on how buying things like fruits and vegetables can be done in an economic way. Schwartz also reviews what college students can do to eat healthy when they move into dormitory life.

Listen to Episode 137 on Podbeam

Mike: Well, hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the UConn 360 Podcast. It’s Mike Enright from University Communications, along with my co-host Izzy Harris of University Communications. Hello, Izzy. How are you today?

Izzy: I am well. How are you?

Mike: Izzy, you strike me as a healthy eater.

Izzy: Oh, I’ll take that as a compliment.

Mike: It is a compliment. So, I, yeah, I’ve, I’ve heard you talk about different things. You’re a pretty health-conscious person. So today we have a guest, Marlene Schwartz, who’s the director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health. She’s also a professor of human development and family science. And her Rudd Center, I think, is one of the great parts of UConn. That kind of deals with the public. We talk a lot about different areas that are front porches for the university athletics, the dairy bar, the extensions. But I think the Rudd Center is really right up there in a way that services people at UConn that may not typically be serviced by an educational institution. So, their office is located in Hartford downtown Constitution Plaza. And the mission of the Rudd Center is to promote solutions to food insecurity, poor diet quality, and weight bias through research and policy. It was originally formed at Yale and smartly moved to UConn in 2015. Marlene earned her undergraduate degree from Haverford College and master’s and doctorate degrees from Yale. And she really studies a lot, a lot of important topics that affect people all involving food, but in many different ways. And she’s going to tell us all about it. So, Marlene, thank you for joining us today here on the UConn 360 Podcast.

Marlene: Thanks so much for having me.

Mike: I hope I gave a good opening explanation of the work you do. And I really mean that. I think you guys really service and credit UConn to maybe to a population that isn’t always serviced by UConn. But tell us in a little more detail about the Rudd Center and the areas that it covers and the work that it does.

Marlene: Sure. So, the idea behind the Rudd Center is to use research. We are a university research center, but to try to use it to answer important policy questions. So, we’re interested in looking at ways to, in particular, improve children’s diets. So, one of the things we study is the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program, things like that. And then we also look at food marketing to children and try to find ways to help decrease the amount of food marketing to children for unhealthy foods. And then in addition, we care a lot about food insecurity. So, one of the settings that we study is the charitable food system, and we’ve done a lot of work here in Connecticut with Connecticut Foodshare and also with different food pantries around the state. And then finally, we are interested in weight bias and weight discrimination, which is another significant problem. And we’re interested in looking at ways to improve healthcare and other settings so that people are not discriminated against because of their body weight.

Izzy: You touch on this a little bit in your last answer, but we all hear about different food options and choice through marketing, whether that’s on social media, TV, newspaper, however you get your news. How can those messages manipulate healthy eating habits?

Marlene: I think that the messages in the media about healthy eating are incredibly confusing. So, you know, the food industry is obviously very invested in convincing you that whatever they’re selling is going to be good for you, and as a result, you can have products contain things like a lot of added sugar, added sodium, but also will say they’re fortified with vitamins and minerals, or will claim to give you energy so that you can get your homework done. And so, I find that it’s hard to really convince people to just go back to the basics that we all learned in terms of the dietary guidelines for Americans and not look for some sort of magic potion that’s going to make you healthy, because you’re always better off just eating real food and trying to stay away from things that are ultra-processed.

Mike: Is food insecurity getting better or worse in this country? And I ask that because I’m part of a group, we hold a monthly food drive that benefits a pantry in the south end of Hartford. And it just amazes me that there’s a need for food in a place like the south end of Hartford where you drive two, three miles and there’s these world-class restaurants that people are eating at. So, it just seems, is food security getting better or worse?

Marlene: So, food security does go up and down. If you sort of look at the year-over-year values that the USDA tends to assess nationwide and during the pandemic. It seemed like there was an incredibly high risk of it getting significantly worse, but then the government really stepped up and the emergency food system really stepped up, and it actually didn’t get worse to the degree that we thought it might during that time. But since then, as a lot of those programs and extra funding has been taken away, I think that we are at very high risk of it getting worse again.

Izzy: What can people do if they want to help with the issues of food insecurity? Should they look into donating to various food drives or food banks? And then what kinds of foods are best to donate?

Marlene: I know that a lot of people really want to try to help with the problem of food insecurity, and from a local perspective, it’s always a great idea to get involved with your local food pantry, or here in Connecticut with our statewide food bank, Connecticut Foodshare, and to donate financially, to donate your time as a volunteer. But the charitable food system is not going to be able to solve this problem. What we really need are policies where the government provides funding so that people have enough money to buy food. And so the things that people can do to help that are really more political in terms of paying attention to the positions of your representatives, your senators, and voting for people who you think will support that kind of government intervention and care to make sure that everybody has the money that they need to buy the food that they need to feed their families.

Mike: Kind of going back to the nutrition part of this and for the parents out there, I think we all know there’s nothing more frustrating or challenging than sometimes at nighttime to get some food in front of a 5, 6, 7, 8-year-old or even a 16-year-old and feed ’em dinner. What advice do you have for parents? You know, sometimes it’s just so easy to put some processed chicken nuggets in the microwave and they were actually eating. What advice do you have for parents working with children really of all ages to make sure they eat in a nutritious way without sending the household into utter chaos?

Marlene: So, it’s a really good question and I kind of wish my kids were here to fact-check me and tell you what it was really like growing up in our house. But I can tell you what we tried to do. We decided early on that having dinner as a family was a real priority, and so we did make every effort that we could, and obviously it gets hard, particularly as children get older, to really have a time that we all sit down together and have dinner. Dinner wasn’t necessarily gourmet or complicated, but we did try to find recipes that still were homemade. Not just warming up something that was frozen and keeping it simple. I think that one thing that my children definitely would tell you if they were here is that the research shows that children have to try something 10 times before they’ll develop a preference for it. Not that candy isn’t a problem, they’ll develop a preference for that right away, or ice cream, but vegetables and other things that might have a more complicated flavor. And one of my children though, famously, I told her to try some broccoli and she’s like, I have tried it 10 times. I still don’t like it. So, you know, you have to work within reason. But I think just continuously providing healthy foods, a variety of those foods, and trying not to get in a big fight with it. You don’t want to have a situation where you’re forcing children to eat something that they don’t want to eat or saying you can’t leave the dinner table until you finish eating. You really want to just set the kind of environment to be one where they have access to the healthy foods and then they can decide how much to eat of them.

Izzy: As you already mentioned, you’re involved with weight bias and weight stigma at the Rudd Center. Can you tell us a little bit more about that issue and what kind of stigmas that people face because of weight issues?

Marlene: I started my career working at a clinic. I’m a clinical psychologist by training and at our clinic we treated eating disorders, and we treated obesity. And so, in talking to patients, I learned and Rebecca Poole, who is also at the Rudd Center, and this is really her primary area of research, we learned that people had a lot of experiences when people made assumptions about them just based on their body weight. So, there are a lot of negative stereotypes that are associated with higher weights, like being lazy or not being as intelligent, and it’s incredibly hurtful and incredibly painful. Not to mention it turns into outright illegal discrimination. And so, we got really interested in trying to understand what was causing that, and then trying to work with different systems to improve it. And one of the systems where a lot of our patients would talk about this was actually the healthcare system, ironically, that they would sometimes feel like they went to see their doctor because they had an earache and their doctor would say, well, you need to lose weight. And so, there was a feeling that medical professionals sort of saw nothing but their weight. And so Rebeccain particular has done a tremendous amount of work both in terms of research as well as providing resources for people working in the healthcare system to understand this issue, to find ways to talk to their patients about weight that is more sensitive, and to try to really make sure that the healthcare setting is one where everybody feels comfortable no matter what their body weight is.

Mike: What are the future things you’re working on at the Rudd Center? What does the future of this whole subject look like?

Marlene: Well, I mean, we haven’t really solved the problems that we set out to solve. I do feel like there’s been a lot of exciting activity when it comes to school meals. One of the things that other states have done, and at the time of this recording, Connecticut has not yet done, is have universal free school meals for all students. So, during the pandemic, the federal government actually made school meals free for everyone because it was a crisis. And that lasted for a couple of years, but then it went away. And some states, I think there are eight of them now, have actually made it a state policy to provide meals for all children at no cost. And we’ve done a lot of research on that and have found that when the meals are provided at no cost, it has a lot of benefits. First of all, more kids eat the meals. Interestingly, even the students who would have gotten the meals for free anyway because of their income, are more likely to eat them when everybody gets it for free. So, it seems to decrease the stigma. It kind of makes it just a regular part of the school day that all of the students go to class and do activities and then everybody goes, and everyone eats the school lunch. And another benefit of it is it really frees up the time of the people who run the program to focus on providing the best food that they can. It takes away a lot of the administrative burden that otherwise they spend trying to figure out who’s supposed to pay, who gets reduced price, who gets a free meal. So, I’m really optimistic about this policy. I’m hoping that it continues to spread through states and ultimately it would be great if we really saw a federal change in terms of providing meals at no cost for all students.

Mike: So right now, what’s the situation on free meals in Connecticut? Is it town by town?

Marlene: No, not exactly. So, I mean, towns that have a certain level of poverty in the town can qualify to provide the meals at no cost for all students. So, in that way it’s town by town, but that’s really a federal policy. It’s not a state policy. One thing Connecticut has done since the pandemic is it actually got rid of this reduced category. So, there’s sort of free meals, what we call full price or paid meals. And then there was sort of a reduced cost meal. Those students now get free meals also, so we sort of, you know, kind of moved them over to the free category and that certainly does help. And then we’ve also provided breakfast at no cost for a while here in Connecticut too.

Izzy: So, we touched on younger children a while ago in the interview. I’m wondering when it comes to college-age students, what is available to them on campus? I know that not every student may come from a family who was taught to have a healthy, nutritious diet. What can they do now? What is available to them? What advice would you give to college students here at UConn?

Marlene: So, I teach undergraduates here at UConn, and as you can imagine, we do spend quite a bit of time talking about the food available here at UConn, and I think there is a very strong dining program here at UConn. There are a lot of choices, and I think the healthy choices are definitely there if students are looking for them. I think what’s hard is that it’s a lot of sorts of easier and faster sometimes to go for the less healthy options, and I think the dining services feel like it’s their job to provide the food that students want. You know, unlike me as a parent in my own household, you know, they’re sort of serving this entire university community. So, I would really encourage UConn students to kind of educate themselves about a balanced diet and then work on making the best choices that they can in the dining halls. And then students who aren’t on the dining plan and are able to make meals themselves, I think can really develop their skills in terms of preparing simple healthy meals in their own apartments where they live.

Izzy: For someone that maybe isn’t super educated on nutrition, are there any free resources that you would recommend that they can use to look into it more?

Marlene: I know that here at UConn in the Student Health and Wellness Office, they do have folks that you can meet with and talk about nutrition. We actually had someone from that office come and present at my class last year, and she had a very sort of sensible, balanced way of looking at your overall diet and just really reminding yourself the basics in terms of the different food groups and how to make sure that you’re getting the nutrients that you need each day.

Mike: Well, and I know we’re going through different age groups here, what about somebody who travels a lot, is on the road a lot maybe for business or just traveling. How do you maintain a healthy lifestyle when your kitchen is a hundred miles away or you just flat out don’t like to cook?

Marlene: It can be really difficult to eat healthy food when you’re traveling. I have to laugh. I mean, I think sometimes the toughest times I’ve had personally have been in airports, especially if you’re in a rush, it can be very tricky to find something. I mean, the good news is now nutrition information about food at restaurants is much more available than it used to be. So, chain restaurants are actually required by law to tell you how many calories are in their different products. And there’s lots of websites that you can go to try to quickly and easily look up the nutritional information about packaged foods or foods you might get at different restaurants. But I would say, in some ways, if you can pack your own food when you’re traveling, that’s always going to be a little bit easier. But of course, on a long trip, that won’t work. So, I feel like part of what can be fun about traveling is trying different cuisines and trying what the specialty is of the place that you’re going to, but you still want to maintain sort of your basic healthy eating habits wherever you go and make sure that you’re getting whole grains, fruits and vegetables, drink lots of water, things like that.

Mike: One thing I’ve noticed when I do go grocery shopping and I do go grocery shopping, you may not believe that Izzy.

Izzy: I’m more of an online pickup or deliver to home.

Mike: So, I still go down the aisles, but it’s interesting to me and somewhat frustrating that the cost of a pint of blueberries is double the cost of a bag of chips. And so, it can be expensive to eat healthy and eat the right way. So that’s got to be a concern of the Rudd Center, I would think.

Marlene: Yeah, the cost of food is a big concern, and frankly, I think really concerning right now in time, it feels like grocery prices are something that people are very concerned about. There are a few things you can try to do to make it a little more affordable. I mean, one is buy your blueberries in July. You know, so you want to try to buy things when they are in season because chances are that they will be less expensive and that what you’re getting at the store is fresher. The other thing is frozen is a great option, so that I think is a very good strategy if you really do love berries, which as you said, they kind of are the perfect example. I think I saw something once, like price per calorie raspberries were number one, right? In terms of expense. That’s a great time to look in the frozen fruit section and look for some fruit that doesn’t have any added sugar but is frozen. And then you can just sort of have that available to put into smoothies or add to your oatmeal, which is probably what I would do.

Izzy: Yeah, I can imagine it being especially frustrating for college students, especially when, you know, everyone’s on a budget. I mean, let’s be honest, everyone is on a budget right now, right? College students, adults, parents, everyone. There are a couple of other resources on campus, right? There’s a Husky Harvest food pantry. You’re involved with that, right?

Marlene: Yes, I am familiar with that and definitely was around when a lot of the conversation was getting started about putting food pantries on campus, and I believe there now are food pantries on all of the campuses of UConn, which I think is great. It’s sad that we need it, but it’s great that it’s there for the students who do need it.

Izzy: Yeah. And I believe it’s open to the community as well. Anyone that has a UConn ID, so student, staff, faculty, it’s open to anyone at UConn, which I thought was a really powerful thing to do, to open it up just to everyone and not specifically students. ‘Cause, you know, the whole population is struggling with food insecurity.

Marlene: Absolutely. I think that’s great that it’s open to the entire UConn community.

Mike: Well, Marlene, thanks for joining us here today on the UConn 360 Podcast. Like I said at the beginning, you do great work at the Rudd Center. Everybody does. And it’s really a way that gets the UConn name out there and doing good work in our state.

Marlene: Well, thank you so much for having me.

Mike: And thank you for listening, Izzy, have a great day.

Izzy: Thank you. I will.

Mike: And we’ll catch you next time on the UConn 360 podcast.