Monthly Archives: March 2010

Day 49: cheese sandwich

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Today’s menu: cheese sandwich, broccoli, pear, milk

I had another flashback to one of my favorite school lunches as a kid: the grilled cheese sandwich. There really was nothing better and at my old school it was always paired with tomato soup. I still like making that combo for my family at home.


But today’s sandwich was actually not like what I remembered from my school days. It was just a cheese sandwich. I think that “grilling” has been downsized. 


You know, I think that the meals are changing just slightly by offering more fresh fruit and new veggies. Compare to this meal from January. Are the people in power reading my blog?

I’ll tally it all up at the end of the month for my monthly recap. But it does appear that I’m eating marginally more pears and bananas as well as more broccoli and there were those mystery greens…. that is IF I decide to give extra credit for something I couldn’t identify…

Guest blogger: School Nutrition Association President, Ms. Dora Rivas

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*** I am honored to have a guest post from Ms. Dora Rivas, School Nutrition Association President. Thanks for writing a guest post! ***

Photo caption:  Fruit and vegetable choices in Fairfax County Public Schools (Va.)

Dora Rivas, MS, RD, SNS, is President of the School Nutrition Association and Executive Director of Child Nutrition Services for Dallas ISD (Tex.).
First Lady Michelle Obama recently told School Nutrition Association (SNA) members that “if you asked the average person to do what you have to do every day, and that is to prepare a meal for hundreds of hungry kids with just $2.68 a child – with only $1.00 to $1.25 of that money going to the food itself – they would look at you like you were crazy.”
In fact, school nutrition programs must prepare 31 million lunches a day that include servings of milk (or a milk alternative), fruits or vegetables, grains and proteins, while meeting other federal, state and local nutrition requirements, staying within limited budgets and pleasing the pickiest of eaters. These meals are served in age appropriate portions that limit fat and provide nutrients critical for development.  However, many school districts have far surpassed current nutrition requirements:   
–      In St. Paul Public Schools (Minn.), more than 56 percent of total produce purchases from September to January were locally grown, and other locally produced foods such as Minnesota-raised bison, wild rice, honey and flaxseed are finding their way on the menu this spring.
–         Spring Independent School District (Tex.) students love the raw jicama, sweet potato and beet sticks served with dip.
–         In Yuma School District One (Ariz.), child nutrition staff bake whole wheat rolls from scratch.
–         Polk County Public School District (Fla.) students rave about the low-fat breakfast yogurt parfaits with blueberries and granola.
Examples like these are found in cafeterias all across the country, with many discreet improvements going unnoticed.  In fact, schools have turned kid-favorites into healthy options, like pizza prepared with whole grain crusts, low fat cheese and low sodium sauce or turkey burgers served on whole wheat buns.
But as school nutrition programs work to offer students more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products, they need your support.  Mrs. Q is raising awareness of school nutrition issues at a critical time – Congress is currently debating legislation to reauthorize child nutrition programs.  Fed Up readers should contact their members of Congress to call for more funds for school meal programs, as well as nutrition standards for all foods sold during the school day.  For more information, visit School Nutrition Association’s Legislative Action page and follow school nutrition news on Twitter @SchoolLunch.

Day 48: pasta

School Lunches, , , ,

 Today’s menu: pasta with meat sauce, orange, green beans, breadstick, milk.

Officially this is my favorite lunch. I just love pasta as a comfort food and I’m over “patties.” Overall today’s lunch is not bad: we’ve got real fruit and veggies right there. Yes, I would eat this one again. I guess that’s a good thing because I will be.

NOTE: I’m still eating school lunch every day, but I am shuffling the posts around in the month of March to hide my spring break week.

Day 47: chicken nuggets

School Lunches, , , , ,

Today’s menu: chicken nuggets, fruit cup, carrots, bread, milk

I’m not a connoisseur, but these look awfully like what one would get at Mc*Donald’s. My husband so graciously informed me about the 38 ingredients of chicken mc*nuggets (little known fact: he worked at a Mc*Donald’s in college). Luckily he told me all that stuff many hours after I had eaten them. They look so innocent in the photo, no?

I enjoyed the carrots and was happy to have them since usually I see the chicken nuggets paired with tater tots.

NOTE: I’m still eating school lunch every day it’s offered to students, but I am shuffling the posts around in the month of March to hide my spring break week.

Spork

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Eating with a spork every day is a bit strange. Whenever I brought my lunch to work before the project, I always grabbed metal utensils from the drawer and threw them into my lunch bag. I did it because I didn’t want waste plastic. Not to mention that eating from metal is just nicer than eating from plastic.

I did some light research (wikipedia) about sporks and I was shocked to find out that they have been around for more than 100 years. I had assumed that sporks were recent thing.

I’m sure the reason that sporks were adopted as the one and only cafeteria utensil is for the convenience of plastic. But I think we need to bring back real utensils and dishwashers. I read a school can recoup the cost of a dishwasher within three years (I can’t find the citation though). And what about the cost of garbage pickup and dumping? We have to think about long-term environmental effects of thousands upon thousands of single use plastic sporks going into our landfills. Seven billion meals are served in school every year (Free for All). That’s a lot of plastic and styrofoam!

We have to reimagine school lunch. That means ditching the spork and offering every student a real spoon and fork with their meal (knives are out for the obvious reasons). Real silverware is the right choice for them and our environment.

Maybe I’ll stop grabbing the spork from the cafeteria and bring my own silverware from home. Or I could buy myself a titanium spork, but I’m not quite that dorky.


Guest blogger: School food service director on ingredients

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*** Our resident food service director Ms A is back to share more information from her unique perspective. Read her previous post on pizza ***

The Ingredient list and what it suggests about school food

It can be as easy as peeling a label off the cardboard packaging and taping it to a wall, yet posting ingredient lists of food served in school cafeterias isn’t standard policy.  In my last piece for Mrs. Q, I blogged that there are 62 ingredients in my school’s pizza.  This information created a buzz among readers because that is a surprising number of ingredients for a plain slice.  But what is more surprising is that so few of you have access to this information.  It’s standard for processed foods to come with an ingredient list at the supermarket, and it should be the same in school.   

For parents and students, displaying ingredients just makes so much sense.  Everyone can make informed decisions about what they’re eating, especially those with food allergies or sensitivities.

For me, the reasons are somewhat different.  I would love it if parents demanded that they have easily accessible information.  Why?

Transparency

Posting ingredient lists allows everyone to talk about the food openly and dispels misinformation about school food and the school kitchen.  Parents may make negative assumptions about the food coming out of the school kitchen, while the kitchen staff might feel the need to defend the food or be less than completely honest about it.  It’s a truly unfortunate situation.  Make no mistake – no one is thrilled about frozen and canned food, but such is the state of school food.

At my school no one sees nutrition information except the kitchen staff and our health director.  I’m not sure how this came to pass in my school or elsewhere.  Parental demand for ingredient lists would bring a level of transparency to school food and shine light on everyone’s dirty little secret.

Communication 

Making ingredient lists available allows us to begin having concrete discussions about school lunch.  We all know that school lunch needs improvement, so let’s come up with a list of priorities based on the most basic components of school lunch, the ingredients that go into the food.  It’s a start to a conversation about explicit problems in school foods and the types food changes needed.  It might be opening Pandora’s box, but at least it’s better than sitting on the issue.

Accountability

With information available, it is easier to hold those who make purchasing decisions accountable for what they buy.  The truth about school food is often in the ingredient lists.  Gauging improvement is much easier and more reliable with two ingredient lists side by side.

Knowledge is power

Having ingredient lists easily accessible still doesn’t solve the underlying problems.  It simply places information into the hands of the school community so that no one can ignore the facts any longer.  The initiative, budget, and determination to carry out change do not come with ingredient lists.  Parental demand for ingredient lists, however, signals to your school that the community cares about its food.  It is a starting point, and one that may help your school cafeteria garner the support it needs to switch from thaw-and-serve to meals cooked in the school’s kitchen. 

I help run a school cafeteria, and I’m excited to be part of the movement to shake up school lunch in the years to come.  I can’t do it on my own because I don’t have control over many aspects of the cafeteria.  I’m very lucky that my cafeteria has had the support to make many changes already that place my school ahead of the curve.  There’s still a long way to go, and I need community support.  

Recently, I put up a few ingredient lists to highlight an improvement.  We began purchasing fresh, locally made bagels without the artificial dough conditioners that our frozen bagels came with.  I bet other schools that have made positive changes are also making more information about their school food available.  Sadly, it seems that the majority of schools out there are slow to make improvements.  Demanding ingredients lists from your school might be a call to action.

Ms. A can be reached at bravenewlunch@gmail.com and her blog Brave New Lunch.

NOTE: all guest bloggers have contacted me of their own free will, have given consent, do not know me personally, and are not receiving compensation. 

Guest blogger: Student concerned about ingredients

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*** Please welcome a student concerned about the ingredients in the lunches she eats. I’d like to make it clear that she is not my student, we have never met, and she contacted me wanting to share her experience ***

Hello! My name is Tara and I’m a senior at my high school in Illinois. I have been through a lot this year in the realm of school lunch improvement.

In November of 2009 I decided to take on our school lunch. I sent my first email to our school food provider (Aramark) in search of ingredient lists for our food. I thought it would be a very easy process to get this information, as I figured they were legally obligated to provide it to me.

To my surprise, after weeks I received no response. So, I contacted my district’s associate superintendent to let him know that Aramark wasn’t responding to my email requests. About a day later I got a response email from Aramark:

“Oh hey Tara! Your message had gotten sent to my spam folder.” Blah blah blah.

Little did I know, I was in contact with a very new member of our district’s Aramark team. Weeks later I received an unofficial word document (obviously typed up by someone… full of grammatical errors) which contained ingredient lists for a few of our main dishes.

I was not surprised by what I found: our food was on the boarder of plastic.

On January 11th 2010, I gave a speech at our school board meeting.
At the time, it was an enormous success.

Our district’s associate superintendent was in contact with me the next day to arrange meetings with Aramark and I to “fix the food”.

At this point I had two main objectives:
1. Have the chemical fillers removed from our food
2. See that an official ingredient and regularly updated ingredient list was made accessible to the student body

And long story made short….

After several meetings with Aramark and district officials I realized neither of my wishes were going to be met.
I was not surprised by the fact that our school couldn’t “find the money” to get the fillers out of the food.

What DID surprise me, however, was the fact that the ingredients in our school food were being kept a secret from the students.
I was actually told by our district’s Aramark coordinator of food services that I should have never been given any ingredients in the first place, and that the woman who had them sent to me unknowingly risked her job by doing so.

In the past month my district’s associate superintendent has dropped out of my efforts.
(I have a feeling he is too busy worrying about the six million dollars the state owes my school district.)

So, I have taken ingredient transparency for my district into my own hands.

I have stated a petition for transparency,
http://www.petitiononline.com/d300food/ (please sign it!)

a facebook group,
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&gid=362978439139

and a blog of my own. http://healthytara.blogspot.com/

The only place I feel that this movement is lacking in is more student support. With that said, I’d like to offer my assistance to anyone who is interested in being a part of this all. There are a thousand different ways one can get involved. (You can start by signing my petition!!)

Also, thank you Mrs. Q for all of your efforts.
You’re putting your body and sanity on the line by doing what you’re doing.

-Healthy Tara

NOTE: all guest bloggers have contacted me of their own free will, have given consent, do not know me personally, and are not receiving compensation.  

Day 46: pizza

School Lunches, , , ,


 

Today’s menu: pizza, carrots, fruit jello, pretzels, milk

I do believe that “french bread” pizza is brilliant. With thick crust it’s easy for the pizza to hold up during the trip to the school. Many readers have commented about their school pizza being soggy and greasy. This stuff has been perfected: it is not water-logged or dripping with grease. I mentioned before that I liked this pizza one time. Well, that has passed as I could only take a few bits this time. However, the crust is quite good actually. And I found the fruit jello to be fantastic! I loved the carrots too, but I didn’t eat the pretzels. Clearly my taste buds are joining the opposition one by one. Next thing you know I’ll be waking in the night craving chilled pineapple and peach fruit cups!