This past spring, Brighter Bites staff in Houston and Austin, Texas sampled Brighter Bites recipes with third and fourth grade elementary students in a taste-test setting to ensure each Brighter Bites recipe is kid approved. A Houston intern gives us a behind-the-scenes tour of how the Houston team put together this year’s fruitful testing and a closer look at how students reacted to one of our recipes.
Behind the Scenes of Taste Testing
The day before a taste testing, the Brighter Bites Houston team prepared a select number of recipes at the Houston Food Bank. We each created one of the recipes start to finish so we would be familiar and passionate about the dish when introducing and describing it to kids. On the day of the tasting, team members readied the recipes for tasting by heating or chilling the food as needed and portioning everything into sample cups for easy transport to schools. Once at the school, we set up comment cards on the students’ tables in preparation for their arrival.
Once the kids arrived, we instructed students on how to fill out the comment cards and what words to use or not use when describing foods. Next, we taught some nutrition education by highlighting a “healthy topic” and talking about how the foods in our recipes related to that topic. Then, we walked kids through each recipe and described what was in it, how it was made, and its health benefits. Once the kids were excited to try the nutritious snack, we passed out the samples and gave students a few minutes to write down their thoughts and comments. We repeated this process for each recipe, spending about an hour with the kids in total.
Our team compiled the data from each comment card, which gave us information on how many kids liked or disliked the taste, colors, and overall quality of each recipe. Brighter Bites has learned a lot from this experience and will use this data to help ensure that we are creating recipes that are health centered and kid approved. This summer we are excited to continue recipe testing and explore more ways to better serve our kids and communities!
Rainbow Omelet Taste Testing: A Closer Look
The Brighter Bites team decided to put our “Rainbow Omelet” to the test by inviting fourth grade students at Red Bluff Elementary School to taste our recipe.
We talked to students about how this omelet has many colors of the rainbow, which add a ton of nutritional benefits for a healthy body. We asked the kids to be open-minded if they hadn’t tried the omelet before and to write down their honest thoughts and opinions on their comment card.
“I like the omelet and I don’t usually like onions, but I liked it!” noted one 4th grade student at Red Bluff. “I like that the colors look like a rainbow” another fourth grader said.
Our study revealed that 74% of the kids thought that it tasted “Really Good” or “Good” and that 77% of the kids thought that the recipe looked “Really Good” or “Good”.
Overall the Rainbow Omelet was well received! We look forward to creating more kid-approved recipes in the future!
