A Report Card on School Lunches : On paper most school lunches look the same; on the plate they don’t
When canned purple plums recently appeared on the government’s surplus commodities list, most school district food service managers weren’t pleased. School-age children don’t like canned purple plums.
In Compton the plums were chilled, scooped straight from the can onto serving trays and set before the student body.
The children promptly threw them away.
Things were different in Stockton. There the plums were mixed with apples, cherries and spices, then sprinkled with a crunchy topping. Students loved it.
Conejo Valley Unified School District in Thousand Oaks developed a recipe for Plum Nutty Fruit Cake. It was a hit too.
“If the kids knew (purple plums) were in the cake they wouldn’t eat it,” says Ruth Roberts, director of child nutrition services at Conejo. She says there are lots of commodities that children don’t like--sweet potatoes and frozen green peas, for example.
Directors, Roberts says, have to “come up with some clever but nutritious ways of using them.” Her staff puts peas through a food processor and adds them to Ranch Dressing--it’s called “green goddess.” Mashed sweet potatoes go into tomato-based recipes, such as spaghetti or pizza sauce, to give the food added nutrition. Her staff even developed a recipe for a chocolate cake with pureed surplus green beans; the children loved it. “It’s totally hidden,” Roberts says.
Every day more than 2 million school lunches are served in California. On paper most of them look the same. According to the federal Minimum Meal Pattern Requirements (formerly known as the Type A lunch), defined under the 1946 National School Lunch Act, meals must contain two ounces of meat or a meat alternate, a cup of vegetables and fruit, eight servings per week of ead or a bread alternate and eight ounces of milk daily. Schools that meet these standards and participate in the National School Lunch Program receive federal assistance--cash subsidies and donated commodities from USDA.
But things have changed since 1946. Gone are the days when little old ladies in hair nets labored over hot stoves in school kitchens. The kitchens themselves have changed; they’ve turned into “food preparation areas.” And, of course, lunch has changed.
Some of today’s standard menus are pizza, salad, fruit and an ice cream bar; a corn dog, fries or Tater Tots, apple wedges and trail mix; taco, fiesta rice, vegetable sticks and dip, a cookie; spaghetti, garlic bread, salad, gelatin; hamburger, potato rounds and a fruit cup; turkey and gravy, whipped or mashed potatoes, fresh fruit and roll. Cooking these lunches is an awesome task complicated by competition from fast-food restaurants, peer pressure, variations in ethnic eating habits and restrictive food services budgets.
There are still a handful of schools in California with on-site kitchens, but most of this food is trucked in from a central kitchen where it has been squirted, dropped, pressed and sealed into pre-plated hot or cold packages. At the school, corn dogs, pizzas, burritos, chalupas (little taco boats) and other hot items are simply baked in convection ovens before serving. The cold component (fresh fruit, salad, gelatin), is kept refrigerated until serving time. Or, the trucks deliver food in ready-to-serve bulk trays prepared in a central kitchen. At the school a cafeteria worker, frequently assisted by upper grade students, simply scoops, slices and serves.
The question is--does anybody actually eat this food? It’s an important question. Funds are allocated to food service departments according to the number of students who eat in the cafeterias; a drop in participation can make a big difference. “Food service departments,” says Marilyn Wells, director of food services in the Alhambra Unified School District, “are forced to operate as a business, similar to McDonald’s.” To improve her business, Wells added grilled hamburgers and cola to her district’s menu in 1984; participation increased from 27% to 34%. “Our goal,” she says, “is to get in as many students as possible.”
That is every food director’s goal.
With this in mind, The Times spoke with directors throughout the state about their school lunch programs. The differences were astonishing. Based on interviews with nutrition experts and food service directors, we chose some of the most representative districts in the state. Some food service directors show exceptional creativity in enticing students into the cafeteria, especially given the problems of working within the restrictions of the government feeding program. Others, faced with some particularly difficult circumstance, such as size of the district, manage to personalize their programs and make food that is appealing to children. Still, some school food services directors admit that what they are serving is “like airplane food,” and others feel that standardization must be their major goal.
CONEJO VALLEY
“The better the director/manager,” says Conejo’s Roberts, “the higher the participation.” Roberts has lured 70% of the students in her district into the cafeteria through an innovative program that includes monthly meetings with cafeteria managers and regular meetings with a student menu-planning board.
“By giving the students a part in the decision making--by having participative management--that’s how I ensure that what I want takes place at the schools.”
At her menu planning board sessions students learn about commodities, then develop ways to incorporate them into the school menu. “They seem to like fresh fruits and vegetables more than cooked or canned,” says Roberts. She feels that the process allows her to strike a balance between what is good for the students and what they like. “Acceptability is a factor: You just can’t shove food down their throats.”
Like the other districts in the state, Conejo must adhere to guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Roberts doesn’t think this is a problem; she says that there is a tremendous amount of flexibility in what can actually be served to children.
For Mother’s and Father’s Day she invites parents to have lunch with their children and serves a special cookie with the meal. She assigns the name of a different principal each month to menu items, such as “Mr. Coyle’s soft or regular taco.” A list of children’s birthdays appears in the “happy birthday” column on each month’s menu. And, capitalizing on the craze for subterranean turtles, she named a new item on the menu, teriyaki-flavored chicken bites, “Ninja Nuggets.”
STOCKTON
Lavada Esters of Stockton Unified School District also has an excellent program. Like Conejo’s Roberts, she entices students into the cafeteria by involving them in menu planning. She holds a major food tasting, which includes the students. She also takes advantage of seasonal and special food prices, purchasing large quantities and storing them for future use.
Although the schools in her district are on the pre-plate system, Esters has added flair and personality to her menus at Stockton. She takes advantage of government commodities. “Labor wise, it’s more cost effective for us to make some of the products that we make: pizza and spaghetti sauce, multigrain pizza dough made with commodity whole wheat, bulgur, rolled wheat and all purpose flour.” Cookies are also made with this multigrain flour mix as is a peanut butter-applesauce cake and a rolled wheat peanut butter brownie.
“It’s a little frustrating at first. People don’t like a lot of changes. But we have expanded to include a lot of new things and we solicit input from the students. It’s a challenge to find things that all of them will like.”
LOS ANGELES
Los Angeles Unified is the largest school district west of the Mississippi; it serves more than 60,000 lunches each day. Because of its size, individuality is a near impossibility--pre-plated lunches sold at Westside schools are the same as those in Eastside schools. Still it deserves a B for effort.
“It’s all controlled centrally because the managers don’t have time to get involved in purchasing,” says Anita King, chief nutritionist. Her eight nutrition specialists and six registered dietitians review all new products the district is considering for purchase; they are then evaluated in the district test kitchen, tested at the schools, and worked into the school menu. “We write all the specifications in the test kitchen, and reduce the fat and sodium in products we buy. That’s important--it makes a big difference.”
King and her staff have developed a set of nutrition practices to ensure that the district complies with the U.S. Dietary Goals. These include: increasing the amount of wheat bread products served to 70%; reducing certain additives in all food products; eliminating canned fruit in heavy syrup and using those in juice; decreasing the use of chocolate milk; maintaining nutrition levels--particularly fat--so they are consistent with U.S. Dietary Goals; promoting use of fresh fruits and vegetables; and developing desserts to include peanut butter, whole grains, and fruits.
To comply with these goals, meat sauces are cooked from scratch in the manufacturing kitchen. So are batter breads, coffee cakes and cookies. The dry mixes are then sent to the central kitchen where workers add eggs, butter, etc. Cookies are then pressed into rounds and sent to the schools where they are baked.
In addition to the standard menu recipes, the district has established recipes for using unusual commodities. For example, prunes, a fruit few kids could love, are baked into fruit bagels. Butter isn’t added to vegetables or breads. Meat sauces contain both ground turkey and ground beef.
LAUSD does use some outside vendors. Sandwich breads, hamburger buns, hot dog rolls and dinner rolls are purchased from an outside bakery, then delivered fresh daily to schools. King says that the district once made pizzas from scratch in the central kitchen, “but it became expensive because it took quite a long time.” She says that foods such as frozen pizzas can be processed more cost efficiently by a manufacturer who is already geared up for production.
UKIAH
Most school districts pre-plate their foods, but in Ukiah, the food is delivered in bulk. Although this would seem to have advantages, Les Ridgway, food services director of the Ukiah Unified School District, says the system isn’t perfect. The food is cooked early in the day, then stored hot in a warm transport cart where it is held for serving. “Vegetables and especially hamburgers and hot dogs lose their heat rapidly. With the pre-plate system, the food might stand 20 to 30 minutes before serving time; in the bulk system it could sit as long as four hours.” Another problem: Because the food is precooked and shipped out in large quantities, only one menu item can be offered to all schools.
Because of this, Ridgway goes to great lengths to provide food that the students will eat--and to compensate for nutritional losses during transport. The central kitchen makes its own sauces and chili beans from scratch (about 80 gallons a week), roasts all turkeys and chickens, and tosses a fresh pasta salad using commodity pasta, garbanzo beans, parsley, a little onion and Italian dressing. The kitchen even adds a few olives. “It costs a little bit,” Ridgway says, “but the kids love them and it looks pretty.” Ukiah serves a fruit bar that is actually made of commodity prunes; surplus sweet potatoes go into a Cinderella cake.
Ridgway does buy a prepared pizza crust, potato rounds, cheese sauce for nachos and frozen burritos, but meat processed into steaks or “Rib-B-Ques” are not on the menu. “We prefer to use our own recipes . . . that way we know what is in it,” he says. “And I don’t think anyone can make chili better than ours.
“I ask the kids what they like--if they want (a dish) made differently. Would they rather have tomatoes on their hamburgers? Do they want more oranges? Then I adjust around the federal requirements and set up menus based on what they want. I’d rather have something the kids are going to eat,” says Ridgway. “Calories in stomach are better that something nutritious that sits on a plate and ends up going in the trash. Some districts put (a commodity item) on the menu just because they don’t have to pay for it. I want to make sure the kids are going to eat it.”
SAN FRANCISCO
Pre-plating eliminates the need for employees at schools in the San Francisco Unified district. This makes it possible for district director of school nutrition, Richard Farrar to maintain control of expenses. It also makes for more rigid menus. “It’s like getting an airplane meal,” Farrar complains, “but we’re forced into doing it because of the economy.”
Farrar does have a nutrition education specialist who helps develop a single menu for all schools based upon the likes of the children. They have reduced the amount of fat, sugar and salt in most recipes--but not so much that the students won’t eat the food. Ground turkey and ground beef are combined in meat dishes; pizza dough is made with part whole-wheat, part all-purpose flour. “We tried (an all) whole-wheat pizza (crust) . . . and the sale of pizza went down. But it came right back up again and it’s been steady ever since.
“Our aim is to put food inside the children. We certainly don’t want to serve certain items that will go in the garbage can. Kids have to take arithmetic and social studies and they don’t have to take cafeteria,” he says, then adds, “if we don’t have any business, we reduce (labor) hours.”
COMPTON
This district has one of the highest participation rates in the state--but not because of the director’s ingenuity. About 93% of the students receive free or reduced price meals. The district is also one of the few remaining districts with on-site kitchens, allowing it the flexibility to develop recipes tailored to student preferences.
But because of past problems with individual school workers who inadvertently eliminated parts of the lunch (a violation of the federal Minimum Meal Pattern Requirements, and one that prevents reimbursement), Compton now follows a standardized program. Consistency has become the main goal; choice is sacrificed.
The program is coordinated by an outside food service management company; managers at all school kitchens prepare lunches according to USDA recipes that are designed to make the best use of commodity items. Compton purchases most baked goods, which are supplied by a bakery company (corn bread is made on-site according to USDA specifications).
Occasionally, a school may offer a “managers’ choice” day, in order to use excess items stored in the freezer. But in general, “The schools follow a standardized cycle one Type A menu,” says Frank Day, food service administrator. “We wanted things more standardized to make sure we stay within the guidelines of the National School Lunch Program.”
BACKGROUND * In California, a school is reimbursed $1.60 for every free lunch it provides, $1.21 for each reduced-price lunch and 16 cents for each lunch a student pays full price for. These figures are adjusted 2 cents when 60% of the school receives free and reduced price lunches. As part of the reimbursement, schools also receive surplus food items such as ground beef, turkey, chicken, canned fruits, fruit juices, beans, raisins, vegetable shortening, bulk butter, peanut products, grain products and flour.
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