At the Table with Dr. Amit Sharma

Welcome to At The Table with Sarah and Julie, a podcast by two pediatric registered dietitians and moms who discuss all things food. They cover topics like pediatric nutrition, oral development, genetic disorders, pregnancy, motherhood, mental health, sustainability, eating out, and more. In this episode, they interview Dr. Amit Sharma, a professor of hospitality management at Penn State University. They discuss trends in food decision-making, including a focus on health and wellness and sustainability. They also talk about the increase in spending on eating out and the impact of COVID-19 on food habits, such as increased home cooking and trying new foods. They touch on the emergence of plant-based foods and lab-grown meats, and the importance of taste and credibility in consumer acceptance. They also discuss the changing food spending habits of families and the role of third-party delivery services. Finally, they explore the influences on healthy eating among children and families. Welcome to At The Table with Sarah and Julie. At The Table is a podcast by two pediatric registered dietitians and moms who love food and wine. This podcast aims to have insightful conversations about all things food from navigating pediatric nutrition and managing selective feeders to exploring oral development, understanding genetic disorders, pregnancy, motherhood, and mental health, to promoting sustainability, eating out at restaurants, talking to chefs, and organizations that support feeding kids. We cover a wide range of topics with our goal to provide you with evidence-based insights but also to be a hub of true expert voices in the food and nutrition field. In this week's episode of At The Table, we had the pleasure of having Dr. Amit Sharma with us. Dr. Amit Sharma is the Edward Friedman and Stordman Professor of Hospitality Management, Associate Director of the School of Hospitality Management, and Director of the Food Decisions Research Laboratory at the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Sharma teaches finance and economics and his interdisciplinary research focuses on cost-benefit analysis, small business financing, and economics of the food service system. He is founding editor and past president of the International Council of Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education, past president of the International Association of Hospitality Financial Management Educators, and creator and host of the All in Foods podcast featured on iTunes. I have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Sharma both as a student and alumni and I am very excited to share this conversation about his research and food with all of you. So with no further ado, Dr. Amit Sharma. Thank you for being at the table with Sarah and Julie. We're very happy to have you today and to talk about your research and get some updates on what you're doing. You and I have worked together in the past. I started as your student at Penn State and we've collaborated on another podcast and some research and it's very exciting to have you here to talk about what you're doing. Sarah, thank you for having me on your podcast and Julie, very nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. You both are doing really fun stuff and great stuff. So I'm really excited to be a part of this conversation. Thank you. So food decisions and you do a lot of research on the people's food decision process. What trends are you seeing right now? So some things sort of remain and I keep looking at COVID as sort of a point in time where a lot of things changed for us. Some things remain important for all of us, which is health, wellness. I don't think that aspect has changed. If anything, I think that's become a little bit more prominent for us when it comes to healthier habits on food. I think what has changed is probably having a more holistic understanding or perspective on how we eat healthier. The other thing I think that's becoming more prevalent is sustainability or being aware of what happens outside of the foods or beyond the food system. So I think those two are definitely the factors that either have remained or have become enhanced. The cost of food has continued to go up. Surprisingly, consumer spending has not been restrained, which is very interesting, which only means that people are still very keen to eat out. So that is a trend that has continued and actually we haven't retreated from spending more to eat out. Interesting. Seeing what you were looking at before COVID, we know how the economy has been affected and we know the changes that have happened and we're talking about price increases in food and accessibility post-COVID. Aside from that, what are the major differences or impacts that you've seen pre and post-COVID? I'll start by talking about home cooking. It became a phenomenon, but I think it's, I'm sure it stayed with some of us. My guess is, I haven't read anything on this particularly, but it'll be interesting to actually do a study on that. I think a lot of us realize that this was great, but I think I'm glad that it's over, that I don't have to be stuck at home and only baking and cooking. The trend in eating away from home, and this is actually based on published reports in terms of trying new things. We're taking a few more risks trying to try new things, novelty, particularly in cuisines. Local foods was always an important part, but now it is becoming even more important for restaurants to be associated with local sourcing or supporting local communities, so that's become an interesting trend. I think unique recipes, whether it's fusion, there are a lot of instances. I'll give you a simple example. End of last week, we were ordering some pizza. Place in town offers some really unique flavors, and they had chicken tikka on pizza. I have not seen chicken tikka in mainstream pizzas outside of large cities. Asian flavors, Korean barbecue flavors infused in local, domestic, very well-known dishes, so that's interesting, and people are trying that. It's not one group of consumers only. So you feel like people have emerged a little bit into more adventurous eaters post-COVID? Definitely. Again, it's based on published reports as well, and we're seeing that. The other thing is plant-based foods are becoming a little bit more mainstream, so people are trying that, giving it a try. The ones that aren't good, listen, food's got to be good for you to stick with it. So if it's a good option, then people are trying this. It's almost something like zero-alcohol beer. There are racks of zero-alcohol beer that are now in local stores. Even people who like to drink regular beer with alcohol, even they're trying that from time to time and saying, you know, why not? So those are some of the things that we are seeing. Well, you did mention plant-based foods, so I wanted to hear your thoughts on lab-grown meats. And I know there's quite a bit of news right now and media influence there with some of the states banning the processing and the distribution of these types of meats. So what is your take, and what's your research showing about those types of foods? In 2023, the FDA actually approved the production and distribution of lab-based meats. So it is something that's, you know, it's a phenomenon that's not a pie in the sky anymore. It is happening. The first mention of lab meat or lab foods was in 1894. So it is something that we've been thinking about for over a century, and it's now happening. So we haven't done anything related to the tasting of lab-based meat because there isn't anything available that we can actually try it out. So I would be curious to see when it does come out, how people respond to it in terms of the taste. I think the taste, the texture is going to really drive the interest. The one thing that we found with the research that I co-authored was credibility. That's always an important factor, especially in food. I think once we get past the credibility, taste is going to be it. If we are able to capture the customer with that taste, I think we might have a good shot with it. Yeah. I think back to people being a little bit more adventurous and willing to try things, if that credibility is there, I think people are seeing the economic benefits, the sustainability, the environmental impacts of it, and then obviously the health ones as well. So I feel like it really could be an emerging area for a lot of people. Yeah. I mean, price point is going to be a big factor, but hopefully over time, we'll be able to bring that down. Interesting. So talking about price point, how has food spending among families changed? What are you seeing because of, obviously, the economy, but as the trends are changing, how are spendings changing? Now we are spending 56% of our food budget on food away from home, and I'm just talking about food away from home. Post-COVID, we have increased by 16%, so 16-odd percent we have increased, and so it's continued to go up. I was doing this presentation with a group of industry leaders, and one of them asked the question that, do you think this is going to continue? I mean, there's got to be a limit to this. At some point, is there going to be a correction? I do believe there will be a correction, and the reason is simple. When COVID ended, our personal savings were about 8% of our disposable. They've now gone down to 3.2%. In March of 2024, they were down to 3.2%. So yeah, I think it is going to be, at some point, we're going to hit the wall, so to speak, with the expenditure. For the moment, it's strong. I mean, the consumer is really helping the industry get back on its feet. That's very interesting. And do you think that that spending is also due because of the availability of food? I did a little bit of research when I was building just a business plan on how third-party delivery, such as Uber Eats and Grubhub, that is a contributor to that, and I saw some statistics that it's going to only increase because there's accessibility to takeout and delivery. More families are choosing that, aside from convenience and being busy working families. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's a click away, literally. I think that convenience makes it even more accessible. I think it has also changed our food habits. It would be interesting to see how the experience of takeout versus actually sitting in a restaurant is different for people now, now that, oftentimes, you don't even visit the restaurant. You're only ordering online. Anecdotally, we heard that people had literally forgotten what the flavors were until they actually went back to the restaurant and sat down and said, wow, this is amazing. So I think it has changed our preferences without, oftentimes, even us realizing it. Interesting. So a lot of your research does involve healthy eating among children and families. What are some of the major influences, aside from cost, which we've already discussed, that impact eating these days? In the literature, there are now studies that are appearing in terms of how social media is impacting healthier trends. I think we have more access to information, whether credible or not. The other day, I was looking at what were some of the most common reasons for using ChatGBT, and guess what? The highest usage of ChatGBT by consumers was for nutrition advice. So people are getting this advice, again, we don't know whether it's all credible or not because we know that ChatGBT can give you some really funky stuff. So I think the interest in healthier eating is increasing. Easy access to information, whether peer-to-peer or from more seemingly intelligent sources, is also gaining traction. So what would be interesting to see is how the sustainability part adds to it. And I know that we were going to talk about sustainability later on. So yeah, I would sum it by saying access to information is making us a little bit more curious about how healthy eating comes into our lives. I want to say it is from a holistic point of view. I think we're hearing more anecdotally, but I don't have any research to cite that. I find that fascinating that, like, one of the most researched questions is nutrition. And I'm wondering, like, the kind of questions that I'm being asked, I think I want to go look into it and see just, is it healthy eating trends, is it what to eat, is it how to lose weight? And I guess, like you said, there's a lot of information, but a lot of it could be misinformation. I'm wondering what's actually being typed back with that information. So I would say all of the above. In fact, yesterday, full disclosure, we had gone out to have some Japanese food and some conversation in the family, and I said, well, wait a minute, I don't want to have carbs today. So now that's a difficult question. How do you not have carbs in a Japanese restaurant? And so I asked Chad GPT, I said, can you give me some suggestions on non-carb foods in a Japanese restaurant? And of course, I got several suggestions, none of which I liked, because of course you want carbs. So I think it's all the above, the question that you said. What's, I think, dangerous, I think we have to be cautious, is when you have conditions, what you want is credible information. You want to go to a doctor, you want to go to a nutritionist, a trained personal, rather than rely on something like this. So I think that's where we'll have to be very cautious moving forward. This is not new. I mean, we've seen this before. I mean, again, you both are experts, and you would go to a non-expert and ask for their advice. And just because it worked for me doesn't mean it's going to work for you, and you could have very different circumstances and body. So I think we just got to be careful, but it is making people curious. Oh, absolutely. Just scrolling through social media, you get the, I think it's like the ads or the sponsor ads to say like, AI works, download this, like now it's like your personal trainer, your photography studio. And people are really doing it because it's pay for the app, and it's what, like 15 bucks or 20 or something that's a little bit more reasonable than going to, say, a doctor or to a photographer or to like a fitness coach or something else. And so people are signing up for these services. And you're right. I think when it comes to nutrition and health, there's a fine line, and there's a danger to it because you might not be getting the right information. There's only so much room for individualization and those broader apps that are reaching a large population that aren't really catered to individual needs that need to be considered. But I think it's great that people are interested in health and wellness. I think that it is becoming post-COVID that has, I think it's catapulted the health and wellness scene. And I think the fact that it's staying around for longer is a really positive trend. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to go back a little bit to, we were talking about your research with restaurants and healthier access. I do see that there are some restaurants going more sustainable, they're trying to source more locally. But in general, when you see the bigger chains where most people would be getting like, say, lunch or fast food or maybe families, are you seeing that more chains and bigger companies are trying to have healthier options in their menus or is it still a little bit vague? So my concern always with restaurants or with any other business is that, first, are you able to offer the right choices? I feel like we beat up the customer, consumers, a little bit more than it's deserved. And I'll explain why. You can only make good choices with the choices that you're given. So if you give me choices between A, B, C, D, I only have those four to pick from. And there's only as much as you can make me pick the best out of those four. And how you define that criteria of best is also very questionable. The moment you add E, F, and G, now that changes my entire choice set, is what we call. So as people who offer those, the restaurants and the chefs and the experts, I think we need to do a better job in trying to offer more choices. And that's not easy. I mean, you're an entrepreneur yourself and you know it gets expensive and in some ways you could even turn away the customer. So all that said, I do think restaurants are taking this seriously. Customers drive it and consumers are demanding it and restaurants are responding. And the ones who are not responding probably are not going to be doing that well. Tell me if you agree or not. But I think a lot of this also has, sourcing is very important, but it also has a lot to do with skills and the skill set. So if you are a skilled operator, you can get more creative even with those mainstream items. But the more creative you get, the more skills you have, the higher gets the price point. So that's the challenge that how do you make these items and options more accessible to the masses and not just be restricted to a certain group of consumers. So I think that will continue to be our challenge. So you know, the fast food and the fast casuals are probably not seeing that much of a change versus the more farm to table and the fine dining restaurants. Portion size is a big part of this, so you can reduce the portion size, but then that becomes challenging because then your value, your price to value ratio changes. So I think it's a complicated issue and one that requires a little bit more thought from all of us, not just the consumers, but particularly the industry. How we scale it up is the challenge. It's very true. Healthy food shouldn't be expensive, but that seems to be the way that it is, right? The more sustainable, the more locally sourced, the more expensive it's becoming. And so it's becoming something of a fine dining and where it's not accessible to families. And I think that's where it becomes a challenge. If you're a family of four and you're saying that you want to be able to give the consumer more options, but if those options mean that's more expensive, then what are you going to end up choosing, Julie and I having both smaller kids? There's always a debate, like I'm also in the industry, whether if I want to go out to a place or not, because looking at their menus, like I want my kids to be exposed to all foods, but also healthier foods and not just like the normal kid food, like chicken nuggets and pizza and pasta. So how do we do that without raising that cost and making sure that the customer and the families feel value in what they're getting, especially with everything that has happened post pandemic, COVID and the economic situation? Yeah. If I have to spend $50 per person to eat healthier and have more of a fun experience, I think that sort of, it reduces the impact that we can have as an industry on healthier eating and better habits. But it's a challenge, you know, it's small businesses and most of our industry is with small businesses. It's hard when you have labor challenges, when you don't have enough people who are willing to do certain types of jobs or the ones that are doing are not well-trained. So all of this really adds to the challenges. So switching a little bit to the school food system, I know that you do some research there. Tell us about the ethical aspects of food access in food school systems and some of the challenges you're seeing in that space. So it's been a while since we did a study in schools, but I can tell you COVID really showed us the importance of the school meals program. It was one of those things, pre-COVID, I was talking to one of our local food service directors and I asked her, I said, what's got to change? And her response was very straight, we've got to make school meals free, that's it. There's only as much as we can do with what we have, we just got to make it free. And I think COVID really had that message loud and clear go to the regulators that this is an extremely important part for our community. So I think that's one thing that has changed, that we realize the importance of how crucial school meals are for our community. The challenges that we had during COVID were related to supply chain. I don't know exactly what's the current scenario when it comes to how far we have been able to resolve those. I mean, the restaurant industry is still having those challenges. So I don't think that schools are going to be any different. But I really hope that there comes a time when we can say that, you know, universally free meals for students, that is crucial. Yeah, it's such an important source of nutrition for our children. And there still is some of that stigma to school lunches at times. And so I think evening that rain field is really important. And by having universal school breakfast, we know that that helps all kids get access to healthy breakfast that they otherwise wouldn't. So I think doing the same for lunch is only going to add value to the schools. We recently interviewed another guest and we talked a little bit about what they do with the school. And they talked about like the different recipes and the access to nutrition. And we talked about how so many students and so many just people in general don't get that nutrition education that they should. We are experts. So we've gone through the schooling and we can talk about food and everything else. But generally, like most people don't get that nutrition education. And I wanted to see it from your perspective and your research. Is that something that you've seen to like with looking at school, food access and nutrition? Do you see that same lack of a nutrition education with students and the parents? That's a really important point, I think. So we've written a proposal for the USDA. And what we were arguing was that the amount of time that you're given for students to have lunch is just ridiculous. In some instances, they are allowed 20 minutes. So they need to get out of the classroom, go in, have lunch, and come back into the classroom. And that assumes that they're going to wash their hands in the process. So 20 minutes. I can't do that. If you give me 20 minutes to eat lunch, I'm just going to say, forget it, I'll have lunch when I have time. I'm not going to eat. I'm going to write this. But kids are doing that every day. So that's a problem. And that is a huge problem. We don't have a universal requirement for states to allot a certain amount of time for kids to eat lunch. Each state has a different amount of time. And it can be as low as 20 minutes. And it is rarely higher than 30 minutes. As an example, France, kids have one and a half hours to have lunch. So that's the lunch break that they have. And other countries are the same. All right, back to your point. So that's part of the nutrition education, right? So what do you eat, how you eat, et cetera. How we found out about this was that we were proposing this project, and we wanted to talk about how much time kids have for eating lunch. That's a study actually we are continuing to do right now, even without the USDA funding. What we realized was that there was this internal, there's almost like an internal competition, if you want to call it, or a race to try and take out as much every minute of the day for the curriculum. And the reason that is, is because it is becoming very competitive for these kids to get into college. So they have to be, academically, they've got to be stronger. And so what has happened is, that space, there's no leverage there. There's not a single minute left for schools to try and do anything else other than what's going to be focused on trying to get these students prepared for college. Again, nothing wrong with that. But what has suffered in that process is time for lifelong skills, such as nutrition, such as knowing what to eat, how to eat. And I think students are missing out on that. I don't know what's the right solution to that, because I have a kid in 11th grade, so I know how important it is for us to get him to college. So yes, all of that, the curriculum is critical. But you're absolutely right, kids are missing out on basic food, nutrition, or education. The time component is something I don't often think of. Not only the time, as you said, when we do think about nutrition education, I often think of it in a more formal curriculum. But what you're saying is the actual time they have to eat, and that time they get to see food consumption being modeled, and that experience of eating, which is so important, is being taken away from them. And so I think that's really important to highlight, and something I hadn't previously thought of. It's fascinating. This sparked something. My daughter's in kindergarten, and she's a very good eater. But she'll come home and say, I didn't have enough time to eat my lunch. She will often say, ask, why didn't you eat the rest of this? You normally like this type of food. And she was like, I didn't have time. They were turning off the lights for rest time. And so you're proving your point. Yeah. And so this put a lot of perspective, because I'm hearing it from my child, and most of the times you're like, okay, your child told you that. I was like, okay, maybe she was a little bit slower at eating, or she got distracted. But you're right. That's not enough to really give children, and even older kids, that nourish themselves, and to really see that moral behavior. Yeah. We're not really setting them up for a long-term healthy behavior. That's really crucial. And I think you both will appreciate that. The last thing you want to do is to have someone be running around trying to grab meals all the time. It's not what you want. Right. And I've noticed that. I mean, even if you're in the cafeteria lighting, you're the last kid to go, you have even a shorter amount of time to eat. And so that's why I think a lot of kids also eat the chips or the candy, because they're like, well, I know I only have five minutes. I don't know if you've done any research of this, or what you see from being a university professor, that transition from going from elementary, high school, to then being a college student and trying to find that independence, and not knowing, having the knowledge. And we're not talking about like perfect skills for cooking or anything else. It's just having that basic nutrition knowledge. Yeah. It's interesting you say that. We did, actually. We did a study with students to see if they had a general understanding of how they were spending their money on food. And based on that, was there any association with their performance academically? And we found two things. One, that students were not very aware of how much money they had left to spend every semester. And I don't know if you both remember, but the money that you have in the fall semester for food will roll over in most instances into your spring semester. But then whatever you have in spring semester, in some of the institutions, it gets purged in the sense that it's gone. You know, you lose that money. And they didn't have that knowledge or awareness. In fact, we checked that with, you know, anecdotally we checked that, and that is a problem for a lot of students. The second thing we found was that students who were better aware of their habits, who were also doing well academically, that's not to say that eating healthier, that is my interpretation, that eating healthier was actually having some sort of an impact on your intellect or understanding of things. Possibly, but I think a more simpler answer is that if you were disciplined in one area of your existence, that usually was transferred to other areas too. So you knew what you should be eating, how you should be eating, and when. That kind of was part of your bigger plan as well. You knew when you should be studying and what you should not be doing. So I think it all goes together from that point of view. We actually are going to be doing an after school learning program for middle school students. I did a pilot this spring. In fact, today I'll be going for the next session just to get students excited about this idea of food and the food system. You are also looking into restaurants and how they can offer more sustainable and healthier options. Do you think this motivates more families to eat out or are increased costs preventing this? So we recently got some funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to look at how we can get restaurants to offer more variety in their menus. It's sort of coming full circle. I think one of you mentioned or talked about variety earlier in our discussion. And I said earlier also that variety is crucial because then we really have a choice between one or the other. So what we're trying to figure out is that how can restaurants offer variety in what we are calling sustainable meals. And a sustainable meal being one that balances the environmental, economic, and human impact of the food system. An important part of that is providing that information to the consumer and then to see whether the consumer will actually change their choices or their preferences. So that's what we're trying to figure out. And immediately what we are finding out is that for restaurants, it is not easy to actually get that information themselves. So if I don't know what's the impact of my actions on those three areas, then I myself am not able to make the right choices to add variety to my menu, if that makes sense. So what we are hoping that's going to come out of this project is what are some of the barriers that prevent even the ones who are offering food to limit the variety to the consumer. And that reinforces the habits that already consumers have, which is to go to those few foods that we so like. That's basically what holds the food system. And so it's really hard to increase variety unless and until we remove some of those structural or institutional barriers. So that's what we are focusing on, figuring out what that information is, how that's going to change consumer perception or consumer preferences, but at the same time will also inform businesses, restaurants, to offer the right variety. That makes total sense. Yes. Very good. Thank you so much again. This was so great. Thank you. It really was. So nice to meet you. All the best. Nice to meet you, Julie. Have a great week. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us at the table. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, as well as on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are Sarah and Julie. Talk to you next time at the table.