How Stealth Health is Changing the Way Kids Eat at Summer Camp

By Liam Macleod

Whether you’re 5 years old or 55 years old, eating healthy can be a daily challenge. Our inner chimp craves the fatty, the sugary and the sweet foods whilst often shying away from the healthy greens. Recently, there’s been a change in the way we approach food, especially at Camp IHC.

This summer, IHC is using a ‘stealth health’ approach to bring a better balance to the way we eat. Lonnie, Director of Operational Support and Innovation for food services at the camp — has been working in the food industry for over 3 decades gave us an insight into stealth health and some of the changes he’s brought in for 2018.

What is Stealth Health?

In today’s society there is a growing focus on healthy eating. One reason is to lower healthcare costs but also to create a more productive work environment to keep people energized throughout the day. Unfortunately we all know that most adults do not like being told what to eat… With this said we quickly attacked the situation by thinking about ways to make our clients employees eat healthy without them even knowing it, this is where the term “Stealth Health” was born. To make it simple — stealth health is a way of taking the ‘not so good for you ingredients’ and replacing them with ‘better for you’ ingredients.

An example of this would be home made salad dressings crafted using low fat or fat free bases instead of full fat. When making the switch you need to be creative as to not ruin the integrity of the offering or condiment. In our Greek Goddess Dressing we infuse it with fresh herbs or other bold ingredients to capitalize on the health benefits and lower someone’s fat or calorie intake whilst still providing a great tasting flavor.

This year at Camp IHC we have introduced this same philosophy and thought process into our dining hall — with the addition of a revamped salad bar. We serve 12 fresh raw vegetables daily as well as incorporating healthy grains, wheat pastas, legumes and lean fresh cooked proteins such as chicken breast and plain white tuna. These are labelled using a traffic light system. All our dressing are made in-house and use the low fat and fat free bases. Another great addition to our salad bar is the daily variety of composed salads. These salads consist of no more than 4–5 ingredients to preserve the integrity of the main ingredient as well as its nutritional content.

What is the Traffic Light System?

This year we introduced color coded salad bar utensils. Our campers and staff will see green, yellow and red serving utensils. Think of these colors and utensils as your traffic light to eating healthy. Green utensils are for our fresh raw vegetables where you can “Pile them on” without hesitation. Next is our yellow tongs which are partnered up with items such as lean proteins, beans and grains, these are still good for you but you want to use these ingredients in moderation and be mindful of how much you are using. Whilst the new salad bar does not contain anything that is unhealthy it brings us to the red utensils. These items on our salad bar are strategically located at the end or back of our salad bar so that by this point you plates are overflowing with all the great fresh raw vegetables and lean proteins and grains that now you can only sparingly use items such as cheeses, crispy baked noodles, wasabi peas, dried cranberries.

What other ideas to eating healthy are IHC doing?

We are really trying hard this year at Camp IHC to allow healthy offerings to take “Center Stage”. This means salad bars are more accessible than ever before, in the dining room there are water coolers infused with wild berries or cucumber and lime, providing important nutrients throughout the day at meal times. We’ve also established a ‘baked not fried’ philosophy. It’s these marginal gains here and there that really add up. Even our food preparation is better than ever before.

How can summer camp kids eat healthier?

Whilst ‘stealth health’ is a step in the right direction we are always looking to improve and do more. Throughout camp you will find snack and hydration stations where kids can drink water all day long and have an endless supply of fresh seasonal fruit like apples, oranges, peaches, nectarines, bananas, etc… We still understand that these are children so we offer fun snacks that kids want like milk and cookies, but we like to provide a good balance.

So far, the feedback has been amazing and Lonnie has been a great addition for the team. We can’t wait to see what he introduces next.

Who is Lonnie?

Lonnie has spent 3 decades in the food service, restaurant and hospitality industry. He’s had roles as a kitchen production manger, executive chef, general manger, Marketing, Concept and Brand Director as well as a National Culinary Director. He’s worked in many top locations such as the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, Guggenheim Museum and United Nations, Goldman Sachs. His 2nd career highlight (after working for IHC of course) was catering for Pope John Paul when he did his Popapaluzza Tour in 1996.