Whitsons School Nutrition, Islandia, has received the Best Wellness Initiative Award for its “Nutrition Safari,” from Food Management Magazine, a leading journal for the food service industry. Nutrition Safari is a wellness education program exclusively developed by Whitsons to teach young children from kindergarten through fifth grade how to make healthy eating choices. Whitsons provides dining services for 50 school districts in over 270 different schools. Whitsons School Nutrition is a division of Whitsons Culinary Group, one of the largest food service providers in the region. The company serves customers in the tri-state area and New England with school dining, corporate dining, and residential living dining programs.
Nutrition Safari’s characters, or “spokesanimals,” each represent a basic food group—protein, fruit, vegetables, dairy, and carbohydrates, and Grant the Gazelle adds his message to “Limit your sweets whenever you eat.” The spokesanimals are used to teach children how each food group helps them to grow strong and healthy. Whitsons supplies its school district customers with posters, activity sheets, and grade-level lesson plans for teachers to use in the classroom all featuring the appealing Nutrition Safari characters: Luke the Lion (protein), Murray the Monkey (fruits), Heidi the Hippo (dairy), Jillian the Giraffe (vegetables), Hardy the Hyena (carbohydrates), and Grant the Gazelle. In addition, a “live” costumed character will visit the schools to present a nutrition program that helps motivate students to try new foods and eat healthy.
“Of course, the most important thing that Whitsons does is to serve healthy foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and foods with limited sugars and fats. Whitsons is committed to using foods without high-fructose corn syrup and other food additives,” says John Whitcomb, Vice President of Operations. “We have had a tremendous response from our Nutrition Safari program. Our characters have really helped children to understand why they should eat healthy food, and we have seen a difference in the foods children are selecting for lunch each day.”
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