UBC Undergraduate Research

Creating New Menu Development Guidelines for UBC Food Services Tucker, Alexa; Sun, Gloria; Zargaran, Farivar; Yu, Seraph; Chau, Shannon; Trevillion, Una

Abstract

This report summarizes the menu development guidelines project; a collaborative initiative aimed at promoting healthy eating on UBC campus. The project was led by a group of 4th year public health nutrition students under the guidance of the dietitian from UBC Health and Wellbeing, within the framework of a SEEDs sustainability program. The introduction discusses the project aim, which was to establish nutrition-related guidelines to inform UBC food services chefs in their recipe development process. This section also identifies the target audience and overall approach to the program. The situational assessment of the project identified two issues of relevance: (1) there are currently no guidelines in place to inform menu development, and (2) student demographics have implications for food choices. The program was predicated on three health behavior theories that were incorporated into the framework of the project: the Health Belief Model, Stages of Change model, and Diffusion of Innovation theory. The project identified a main goal of promoting healthy eating among students that live at UBC residence, as well as supporting short, medium, and long-term objectives. The report summarizes the project outputs, which consist of the “Recipe Development Guidelines” and supporting document. The report also illustrates the program’s evaluation plan; both the process evaluation that we conducted as well as the hypothetical outcome evaluation that would be completed once all outcomes have been met. The conclusion considers the significance of the project, reflects on lessons learned, and makes recommendations for future programs. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International