How cooks navigate nutrition, hunger and care in public-sector foodservice settings
Open accessAbstract
Objective: To examine the perspectives and practices of cooks responsible for carrying out healthy meal programmes in publicly funded foodservice, in order to better understand what they consider to be ‘good’ food and where nutrition and nutritional standards fit into this conceptualization. Design: A qualitative, exploratory study involving in-depth interviews that were conducted with cooks and their supervisors about their work practices and perspectives on providing healthy food for clients. Setting: Participants were recruited from child-care, after-school, senior-centre and shelter settings that had participated in healthy menu training in New York City, USA. Subjects: Eighteen cooks and nine supervisors working in the aforementioned settings. Results: The views and practices of both cooks and supervisors about what constitutes ‘good’ food extend beyond a purely nutritional view of goodness to include the importance of addressing hunger and clients’ food preferences, among other factors. Cooks address these by interacting with clients and altering recipes and menus in a range of ways to maximize the likelihood of food consumption and enjoyment. These approaches are often, but not always, compatible with setting-specific nutritional guidelines that may be set at the national, state, local or organizational level. Conclusions: Cooks play a key role in translating nutritional guidelines into what is served. In doing so, they engage in skilled labour and forms of care that increase the ability of public-sector foodservice to address food security and other goals, but these aspects of their work are not widely recognized.
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En janvier 2021, 2 714 restaurants collectifs sont labellisés « En cuisine », soit une hausse de plus de 100 % en 2 ans.
“En janvier 2021, 2 714 le sont soit une hausse de plus de 100 % en 2 ans39”
From La transition agroécologique de la restauration collective en France : une mise en perspective multi-niveaux (2022) · cites this paper as [39]
The Methods section describes interviews with cooks at New York City foodservice sites, not French restaurants holding the « En cuisine » label. Searches for the label, the January 2021 count of 2,714, and the claimed two-year increase found no passage addressing those figures. The paper was published in 2016 and does not report a January 2021 count. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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- Authors
- Tsui, E. K., & Morillo, A.
- Affiliations
- Lehman College (US)
- Corresponding author
- Tsui, Emma K
- ORCID
- Tsui, Emma K
- Venue
- Public Health Nutrition
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2015-07-02
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 946-954
- ISSN
- 1368-9800 (ISSN-L)
- 1475-2727
- PMC
- PMC10270883
- OpenAlex
- W1951265392
- Cited by
- 13
- References
- 21
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 2.43
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- public-domain
- www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified)
- Locations
- Public Health Nutrition (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, public-domain)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- City University of New York
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Food Security and Health in Diverse Populations
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Health Information Management › Dietetics, Nutrition, and Education
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Nutrition, Health, and Society Studies
- Keywords
- cooks, nutritional standards, hunger, food preferences, food security, care work, skilled workers, menu adaptation
- MeSH terms
- Whole Grains, Diet, Healthy, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Cooking, Dietary Proteins, Evaluation Studies as Topic, Female, Food Preferences, Food Services, Fruit, Humans, Hunger, Institutional Management Teams, Male, Menu Planning, Middle Aged, New York City, Nutritional Status, Nutritive Value, Vegetables, Public Sector, Nutrition Policy, Young Adult, Drinking Water
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