Influencing school dinners

I had a curious email from an MBA student a couple of days ago. Asking for some direction in the academic study of influencers (answer: not much), he explained his interest. The much-discussed school dinner healthy eating debate can be distilled into one simple issue: kids don’t want to eat healthy food.

So my correspondent has identified the critical factor in getting kids to want to eat healthily – find the influencers and get them to promote the idea. His thesis is that the headteachers, dinner ladies and other people in the school community are key to encouraging kids to eat well.

It occurred to me that Wayne Rooney might have a more powerful effect on kids’ eating behaviour. Pictures of Wayne eating salad might influence kids more than the headteacher…

But it’s interesting that the concept of influence extends beyond business and consumer purchasing to other aspects of life, and that we can improve our social environment through appropriate use of influencers.