Examining My Plan in Reality: How a Wiscard Health Account will change the Food System

Literature involving health information in the dining halls was one part of my project but my bigger idea and change was in the Wiscard health account. There are many parts to the Wiscard account and my proposal may seem far-fetched but to me it’s a new way to gain information on health and lifestyle that may be absent in other changes to the university dining halls. Literature around the campus and other small changes to access of information in the university residence halls are part of the project I can do myself but I cannot do the Wiscard account. I will construct a plan and put its components together as I would like to see it in theory but resources and time does not allow me to make my project a reality.
Wiscard Account Plan and Idea
The Wiscard account is about collecting information on nutrition and lifestyle to be easily accessible to students through the swipe of their Wiscard; the University of Wisconsin- Madison student ID. Residence hall students at University of Wisconsin use their Wiscard to pay for the majority of the food they eat. This food is on students Wiscard. The idea of the Wiscard food account is to take count of food each student eats and nutritional information of this food to create an account of the food students consume.

With this students will have immediate access to nutritional information and the food they put in their body. By tying it to a student’s Wiscard, it makes it easier for students account to be managed and organized. Rather than providing a service where students would manually control it themselves a system related to their Wiscard will take out steps of the process. This solution stems from the idea of Professor Brander proposed in lecture; that if you want to change people’s behavior make what you want them to do easier.

Removing the step that students have to manage an account and total daily nutritional information on the food they consume will make it easier and for busy students to have access to information regarding their health. And as discussed (in previous post/paper) the more a student manages and has information regarding the food they consume, the more their behavior is likely to change for the better.

Making it easier for students to have this information could have an impact on the way they make decisions about food consumption. Hopefully changing this part of the food system at the university will create more demand on the purchase of healthy foods in the dining halls. As this demand for healthy food changes, as result healthier options would be more prevalent and diverse for students.  Thus hopefully in the long run students will have both more information regarding nutrition consumption and more options of “healthy foods” in the halls themselves.

Though of course these are what ifs, things I cannot guarantee will be a result of the Wiscard account. There are many things that must turn out a certain way for this to happen. Mostly these things regard the way people approach the residence dining halls and if the existence of the account will change the way students act. Things that must go the right way include: students will be enthusiastic and use the Wiscard account, the information students receive on the Wiscard account will be persuasive enough to change their behavior, and other circumstances in the halls that don’t block decisions made in the dining halls (i.e. prices of healthy options are not too high).
How It Will Work
This proposed food account will have three main components: food, activity and information. There will be different ways to access the account: website, cell phone application, etc. The goal of the account is to make it easier for students to know and understand information regarding their health and nutrition. With that idea, I tried to create a model of the account that makes it easy to understand, easy to access, and easy to make changes based off of what is on it.

The first component is food. As a student buys food from their Wiscard, whether through their housing account or campus cash, the information of the food they bought would be uploaded to their health account. When a student wants to access the information or change information of the food they bought they will go to account and see nutritional information directly related to the food they bought and consumed. It will display how this food affects the body, showing reactions to a student’s behavior of choosing which food to eat.

The next component is activity. It will work similarly to the food, but be managed differently. It will total the activity a user does in a day, and total their activity of the day to see how it relates to their body and nutrition. For example, if a user runs three miles it will show how the running affected their body. This will be related to the food account, and display information on the best food to be paired with a student’s activity level. The account will demonstrate how decisions to be active, or lack thereof, affects a student’s overall health.

Information portion will be the final component. This will be tied to food and activity, as mentioned. Information on either ways to change food consumption for the better or activity will resemble a user’s account, dependent on their particular food and activities. For example if a student ate a fried chicken sandwich and French fries for lunch, this section will advise the user to perhaps try a grilled chicken sandwich and a salad, then demonstrate on the account how making this change would change the user’s daily nutrition and health. Displaying behaviors of students and consequences of their decisions and how changing such behaviors can change their health and lifestyle but impact their dining hall.

Though things will be updated automatically via the Wiscard, there will still be manual control on the account. Automatic function is set up to make it easier to read and access, under the idea that students are busy and are most likely not going to assert themselves to start a collection of  food consumed. Being that automatic control is well automatic, allows for the account to be started free of hassle for the student; they just hop on board.

However because students eat and consume outside of their Wiscard, or buy things for other people on their Wiscard account, manual control will be a feature of the account as well. This will also be beneficial to students who do not live in the residence halls and still want access to an account where they can track their nutrition. Though that is to say, they will be working more to get the information than residences.

Automatic and manual control will be put in place so students can be sure to get the most out of the health account as possible, making information and data as accurate as possible to their consumption. If the account does not work to reflect their intake as best as possible then students may stray away from its use and ignore it all together. Going back to the idea of making it easiest for students to access information, but making sure information they receive is still accurate, that it’s useful for them to change their behavior. This after all is the overall intention of the Wiscard health account.
Resources
This project I propose entails the construction of a website and other media which I do not have the means to do myself. Therefor this project will need to enlist the help from various sources, if it were to be successful. Different circles on campus may be interested in this project as a stepping stone to one of their projects or an idea.

Those to help construct this idea include: fields in computer, University Health services, the nutrition department and the dining halls themselves. People in these fields cannot only help with the projects construction, but if it is not constructed can use the idea as a starting point for a future project. Either constructing and executing this idea or expanding or changing it to make it applicable to a project they want to do. However, other people than myself need to be enlisted for this project to be anything.
Struggles
I have outlined what I see my project doing and functioning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but other than that my project did not go anywhere. I don’t think it was successful. I only have a structure of an idea for my project. I have constructed a model in my head and have outlined some of it here but have not gone beyond. There are many roadblocks I ran into with the project and my two biggest struggles being: time and assertion, are why my project may not seem complete.

I do not want to make up excuses to why I think my project was not very successful but I would say time was a problem. As I talked about in my paper college students are busy and putting aside time to do things, even school work is difficult, and I am certainly not immune to this. I think if I have devoted more time and asserted myself more the project could have reached greater bounds.

Assertion was another one of my struggles. I was timid to putting myself out there and promoting, standing up for my project. I think this was my ultimate failure and why I see my project as unsuccessful. If I would have organized myself sooner and built up my project and went out to advocate for change in the system, maybe I would have seen a change. I think what stopped me the most was being afraid of failure, being shut down, not having things go the way I wanted. But the thing is, when you don’t try and  do anything you still fail, but you just get to hide behind never trying, instead of vulnerability of putting yourself out there.

If I learned anything from this project it was that. It seems like a common sense; you don’t try you won’t succeed, but I guess I never experienced such circumstances before. So though the University of Wisconsin-Madison community has yet to gain anything from my project, I did. And I think I will use that to perhaps better another community in the future, and then I will take this lesson with me.
The “Why”
I think I wasn’t willing to try or fully put myself into this project because my “why” was not there. The Ted Talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action by Simon Sinek, (http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html) says the most important thing is “why” we do something not, “what” we do. When the project was assigned I didn’t have a “why.” I wasn’t invested in changing on the campus or world. My classmates were filled with whys and I was tied up in what to do; finding a topic I could change on campus not because I saw myself passionately invested in it but because I needed to do it for a class.

There are many things I would love to change or make better in the world, the problem is I don’t know which problem I am invested in solving yet. Not being invested or devoted to this project was the main reason for its failure. The only reason I had to succeed at this project was a grade. And I think that is the reason I was unable to succeed.
Final Statement
Overall I don’t think my project was successful. I think I have an alright idea on how to make a change to the dining halls for residence at University of Wisconsin-Madison. There are flaws to my project: the system I have in place not working, affects may not be vast, if put in place students not taking advantage of the account, but most of all my biggest flaw was myself in the project. This is a project to change “the world”, so why would I be important in it? If I am a person who is to make the change I believe I must have the outmost desire and passion, put myself fully into making this change happen. Unfortunately that was not the case with this project and my proposed change to better the university. That is why I think this project’s biggest flaw, besides a somewhat unclear and undeveloped model was I.

Sinek, Simon. “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” Ted Talks. Video. Web.  Sep. 2009.

Improving Dining Hall Facilities and Availability to Nutritional Information in University of Wisconsin Housing

Providing healthy choices has always been a popular way students have asked for universities to improve options in dining halls. Though this is a great platform I hope to install different measures to improve dining hall facilities and nutrition of students on campus. I will: look into how students can take care of their own behavior and having a student takes responsibility of their nutrition by providing them with more electronic information and a new medium; I will make healthy living tips and ideas more accessible to busy students in the residence halls; and examine the sustainability of efforts at other universities and see if such actions are conceivable at a large public institution like the University of Wisconsin- Madison.

Benefit of Healthy Lifestyles and Why it is Important to College Students

Examining what a healthy lifestyle is one can examine the definition of, “healthy” as, “possessing or enjoying good health or a sound and vigorous mentality; a healthy body; a healthy mind” (dictionary.com).  A healthy lifestyle is implementing things that contribute to being, “healthy” to everyday life. Or a healthy lifestyle promotes a “healthy body” and a “healthy mind”. With that said the University of Wisconsin can take action to enhance the accessibility students have to a healthy lifestyle; which will help in facilitating a healthy body and mind for its students.

Importance to living a healthy lifestyle and its benefits are not commonly refuted. Health and maintaining lifestyle characteristics regarding health not only benefit a person in the short but also the long term, through disease prevention. Doctors Mathew Reeves and Ann Rafferty explain the long term risks of not sticking to a healthy lifestyle,

“Chronic diseases account for the greatest overall population disease burden in terms of mortality, morbidity, and decreased quality of life. Most people with major chronic diseases share multiple common lifestyle characteristics or behaviors, particularly smoking, poor diet, physical inactivity, and obesity.” (Reeves, Rafferty, 2005). 

Unhealthy lifestyles can lead to the quality of life in people; not endorsing this at the university can lead to later implications on students. Information regarding nutrition can have lasting effects on students’ health.

That is why a successful information tank and system regarding health and overall lifestyle of students is important. Supporting students now is a resource to them for both the present and the future. The benefits of information and knowledge about nutrition will be long-lasting in improving UW students’ quality of lives.

Growing up in schools children are always told to eat a good healthy breakfast, quality food consumption has always been known to relate to academic performance. Healthy lifestyles also benefits students academically. With a combination of exercise and healthy eating, which contributes to a healthy lifestyle, students can see improvement in grades. The article Diet Quality and Academic Performance shows the benefits long term and current of effective health systems in universities, “diet quality is important to academic performance… support the broader implementation and investment in effective school nutrition programs that have the potential to improve student’s diet quality, academic performance, and, over the long term, their health” (Asbridge, Veugelers; 2008). Information on to maintaining healthy lifestyles will help students with their academics and performance at the university. Providing students with resources on living better will aid in bettering their academics.

The university should have full interest in improving the dining hall services and availability to nutritional information on campus. Doing so will help the life quality of students and employees now and in the future. Life quality can stem from health and nutritional consumption of a person thus providing resources for students to do so will benefit their overall well-being; both physical and mental.

University of Wisconsin-Madison and Current Information on Resident Dining Halls and Nutritional Information

Currently the University of Wisconsin’s dining hall facilities provide healthy and not so healthy choices; but which is less remarkable about the system is information and a seemingly lack of resources by the university. On the link (http://www.housing.wisc.edu/dining) to the dining and culinary services for housing at Wisconsin on the university’s website the current system can be evaluated. As of November 19, 2011, the university most of the universities nutrition resources are under the “Nutrition and Allergen Information” Tab (http://www.housing.wisc.edu/dining/nutrition ).

Resources and Information are divided into different categories, one being “Net Nutrition” which lies out a plan where one selects the dining hall facility and the menu option there and this tool provides them with nutritional information on the food selected (this is similar to the plan and tool in which I propose for the universities nutritional information but as you will see mine will go beyond direct nutritional information on food consumed in the dining hall). 

Under the “Nutrition and Allergen Information” tab the university provides two websites (not affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison).  One being, http://www.choosemyplate.gov/ which is, “a Web site that offers many tools such as, healthy eating tips, personalized meal plans and diet analysis” (http://www.housing.wisc.edu/dining/nutrition).  This government sponsored website is similar to the electronic resource tool I propose but may provide different resources and be directly affiliated with the food options in the dining halls.

The other resource provided by the website which is described as, “a free diet journal…to track your food intake, exercise, goals and weight loss” (http://www.housing.wisc.edu/dining/nutrition). This will also be contributed to my proposed tool but be more comprehensive. Having tried to use this resource for a week, eating the food at the resident dining halls I found it very difficult to manage and it seemed to not work well from someone eating in the dining halls, and is fit for a student eating independently.

Changing Nutrition Information with Dining Halls

In Consumers’ use of nutritional labels: A review of research studies and issues the information and analysis of the effectiveness of labels and nutrition says,

“The format that consistently produces the most positive dietary benefits is the percentage declaration of the various nutrient amounts based on the daily values for each nutrient. Consumers tend to perform poorly with manipulation of quantitative nutrient information. Furthermore, the use of bold text, colored nutrition panels, and whole numbers instead of decimals and calories instead of joules are preferred by the majority of consumers” (Drichoutis; Lazaridis; Nayga, 2006). 

With that I propose there be a change in the format of the current nutritional labels in the dining halls so students will be most receptive to nutritional information. This is what the current label looks like: Changing the label to what consumers respond best to and making them easier to read will be a small thing that can change how students get more information about the food provided by the university services. Changes will be made to make it visually appealing and easier to quickly interpret by the use of “percentage declaration of… nutrient amounts” as suggested by authors of Consumers’ use of nutritional labels: A review of research studies and issues.

Though information is provided on the university dining and culinary services website it does not go far enough into catering for a busy student nutritional needs and schedule… pun intended.  I hope to act on improving this system from various angles. Intended improvements include: fixing the portrayal of nutritional labels in dining halls, making it easier for students to access information regarding their health, and putting out the word on healthy living.

Having a program that inputs and adds food from student housing food account with tips and information related to their account characteristics is will provide busy college students better information directly related to the food students consume. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics college students spend 8.8 hours of the day they are not sleeping: traveling, eating, education and work. With this busy schedule students don’t want and will not take the time to invest their time into their nutrition. If a system made it easy and clear for students to get nutrition information and health tips, it could benefit students more effectively.

Even though the current system provides clear information we have to change the system responding to college students and their lifestyles. As mentioned, college students spend much of their day doing activities, working or sleeping, with that said a system should respond easily and efficiently. Providing students with easy to access information designed to their busy schedules and the particular food they eat may be more effective. Instead of students having to take away from daily activities, more students will be able to get a hold of their health; because time use will not interfere with their nutrition.

To integrate health information into University of Wisconsin-Madison residents better I plan to get involved with the University health services. The “University Health Services” at University of Wisconsin has a Facebook page that is updating health tips and ideas this November, 2011, (if you are interested in information this Facebook page provides I encourage you to “like” the page here, http://www.facebook.com/UHSMadison?sk=app_156218351098324).

My integration will involve me contacting the service and exploring and implementing ways we can better integrate these healthy living tips into student life in residence halls more. Ideas such as table menus in the dining halls with small little tips to improve health, (university health service will provide me with this information) and elevator signs (for when student get stuck in the old elevators). Information will also be tailored to the food options provided in the dining halls to better relate to students.

When dispersing this information and handing it out, I hope to put it places where it may catch resident’s eyes. Hoping to make those who want the tips easy to find and read. Such places would be table menus in the dining halls or elevators (for those times students get stuck on the way up to the tenth floor). Though this is a little thing I hope it will bring quick and easy, but also solid information to students who may not take initiative to use online resources.

Examining Angles to Approach the Problem

One may question why a university should invest in such resources for their students. But a good health and body nutrition will benefit students in various ways. Article by nutrition educators at Brigham Young University titled Eat Better to Feel Better: Capitalizing on Self-Reported Benefits of Dietary Changes, “Self-reported observations of the benefits of nutritious eating may reinforce academic learning and be powerful motivators” (Brown, Hill, 2001). Students with a better relationship to nutritious observation and information health not only benefit their physical health but also their academic performance. Not to mention a system where self-reported observations on student health was beneficial to overall wellness of students.

Attacking the flow of information regarding nutritional information on how to better lifestyle may be different than traditional measures taken to improve health of college dining halls. According to the authors of an article on the success of goal making and how decisions are carried out,

“During the goal-striving process the decision must be remembered, the opportunity for enactment recognized, one or more instrumental acts or goal-directed behaviors must be acted and coordinated by the decision maker at the future opportune time, and various post-decision deliberative and motivational processes (e.g. planning, monitoring of progress, overcoming impendent, resisting temptations) must be conducted in support of the decisions making” (Bagozzi, Dholakia, Basury, 2003).

If a student wishes for better health and improving their lifestyle in regards to nutrition, there must be motivational process quoted above, to assist in reaching their goal. Thus with a system that can effectively provide these processes, students will have better results in completing or meeting their goal. This is overall beneficial to their quality of life and their input to the university.

Conclusion

Some of my solutions to fixing nutritional information and health services provided by University housing I will attempt to act out myself and other aspects I will lay out the system piece by piece. Hopefully, my different angles to the problem and various solutions will contribute to enhancing the culinary services program at the University of Wisconsin. Though the system has resources that are in the right direction, it can use some fixes and enhancements to ensure its impact. Though many students may choose to ignore or look past the health- oriented system I hope to put in place, I feel it’s still important. Only if a few students have life-long results and benefits from my efforts I will feel as if I leave the university housing and its dinging services better than it was before I came.

Works Cited

Bagozzi, R, UM Dholakia and S. Basurot. “How Effortful Decisions Get Enacted: The

Motivating Role of Decision Processes, Desires, and Anticipated Emotions.” Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 16.4 (2003): 273-295.

Reeves, Mathew J., and Rafferty, Ann P. “Healthy Lifestyle Characteristics Among Adults in the

United States.” Archives of Internal Medicine, April 2005; 165: 854-857.

Brown, Lora Beth, and John M Hill. “Eat Better to Feel Better: Capitalizing on Self-reported

Benefits of Dietary Changes.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 33.4 (2001): 247-248.

Andreas Drichoutis; Panagiotis Lazaridis; and Rodolfo M. Nayga, Jr.. “Consumers’ use of

nutritional labels: A review of research studies and issues” Academy of Marketing Science Review 10.9 (2006).

Division of University Housing. “Dining and Culinary Services: Nutrition and Allergen

Information”. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2011. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. 

Bureau of Labor Statistics. “American Time Use Survey.” United States Department of Labor.

2011. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.

Florence, M. D., Asbridge, M. and Veugelers, P. J., “Diet Quality and Academic

Performance”. Journal of School Health, 78: 209–215. 2008. 

Health is major concern all people on the planet share. A healthy lifestyle not only is beneficial to the physical health of a person but its benefits can be seen in different areas of their life. Improvements to health can have reciprocal benefits. This means fixing a faulty health system will have a positive impact on their overall well-being.

One of the biggest ways people can improve their health is by examining the food they eat. With that said young people, especially college students may have the best intentions regarding their health but don’t always execute accordingly. The best way to fix this is, change the system in which students (specifically ones here at University of Wisconsin-Madison) make nutritional choices daily. Naturally putting a target and trying to fix the system through the residence dining halls.

There are many problems to be solved regarding health in relation to students and their life in the residence halls. There will be a couple in which I intend to focus on: awareness of food consumption and easy access to information on ways to improve a healthy lifestyle.

I intend to attack the problem from different angles, hoping that will result in a further reach. In my project I hope to propose a plan in which students can have direct access to their food consumption and its specific nutritional information in relation to what they buy via their WisCard. This makes it easy and not time intensive for students to go (probably through a computer program) to track the food they consume and the effects it has, be it positive or negative.

I also intend to provide students with direct access to tips on little things they can do to improve overall health and physical well-being. This will be small things, but hopefully they can make a large impact. This will be attempted through posters giving little tips on what a student can do to improve their health (i.e. Walk up the stairs instead of taking an elevator once a day). Improvements for healthy living will become captioned on the website with student food intake as well.

These are little things I hope to fix in the system (where students are not able to reach their potential health) which I hope will make a difference. It may not change the world. It won’t even change the behavior of most of the student body but if it makes a difference to a few then something will be accomplished.