Despite little change over 20 years in the healthfulness of the foods we consume, more Americans rank their diets worse. Are we more receptive today to dietary guidance?

The obesity trend is significantly influenced by socioeconomic factors, such as income level and race/ethnicity that create complex questions for the food industry. There remains a clear relationship between household financial resources and diet perception: People who rate their diets as “excellent” tend to come from households with greater financial resources than those who rate their diets as “poor.”

Technomic finds ample growth opportunities for restaurants serving the first daypart.

While breakfast sales have grown steadily for restaurants, retailers and suppliers over the past few years, consumer data shows that the market is not yet saturated and there are still plenty of opportunities within this category. Technomic estimates the breakfast segment accounts for 12% of the total restaurant industry, generating around $42 billion in annual sales.

Breakfast patronage is up at foodservice locations, particularly fast-food restaurants, where 46% of 1,500 consumers surveyed now occasionally purchase weekday breakfasts compared to just 33% in 2009.

Cindy Hutson helped start the Caribbean wave that began its sweep of the nation nearly 20 years ago. But then as now, she was about so much more. Today, she’s proving it.

By Brent T. Frei

Cindy Hutson, who was born in New Jersey, thinks she might have been Jamaican in a past life.

She says that tongue in cheek. (Her ex-husband is Jamaican.) But for someone not from the islands, Hutson stumbled upon stardom virtually overnight as one of a small cadre of chefs in South Florida in the 1990s who showcased the region’s bounty on menus. In Hutson’s case, her approach had a decidedly Jamaican bent.

“All I did was really common, local food that you would find in Jamaica,” Hutson says. “But I did it a little differently. I didn’t Americanize it—I fine-tuned it on the plate so that it would work in a fine-dining restaurant.”

The best advantage of field trips is the range of learning that students acquire. Here are tips for maximizing their benefits.

By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT

Last month, we discussed Evaluating Student Papers in Case Studies, the third in a series of Mayo’s Clinics on Case Studies (#23, Using Case Studies in Teaching; #24, Types of Case Studies and #25, Evaluating Student Papers in Case Studies). This month, we will discuss types of field trips, involving guest speakers in field trips, building on #19, Using Field Trips and Site Visits Effectively. One way to think about types of field trips is to consider four options—group field trips, individual field trips, planned field trips and serendipitous field trips.

Your students will want to reach for the tongs, spatula or spoon. Don’t let them. These six steps in class will effectively remove students’ fear—and enhance their thrill—of sautéing.

By Adam Weiner, CFSE

For the last several articles I have addressed teaching business skills of our industry and teaching techniques. Now it is time to return to the teaching of specific cooking subjects. A cooking technique that both thrills and terrifies students is sautéing. To alleviate the fear, minimize the mess and cut back on food costs try the following six steps:

1. Teach What Is Sautéing. Sautéing basically means “to jump” in French. Tell your students that the different ingredients are cut into uniform size, and are added to the pan in the order of what takes the longest to cook going in first. The food is jumped, not stirred. In other words, the cook keeps flipping the food over in the pan so all sides of the food cook uniformly. Usually sautéing is done with a small amount of fat (generally oil or butter) in the pan.