The Wisest Course : School Lunch Programs Try to Put Best Food Forward Despite Obstacles

Macaroni and cheese as a weapon against foreign aggressors?

We might not think of it that way these days--not even in a food fight. But 45 years ago, not only macaroni but fried chicken, butter, gravy, milk and even Salisbury steak were seen by some as necessary for fortification against our enemies.

While U.S. scientists worked feverishly in secret labs across the country to develop nuclear weapons, their counterparts in the field of nutrition were also working on a project to strengthen the nation’s defenses: lunch.

School lunch, to be specific.

After a noticeable number of the young men who volunteered to fight in World War II had to be turned away because they were in poor physical shape from malnutrition, the National School Lunch Program was instituted in 1946 to make the soldiers of the future healthier.

The idea was to assure that all children got at least one well-balanced meal a day. But that was in the days when food was supposed to “stick to your ribs”--before anyone discovered that it also sticks to the insides of your coronary arteries.

Now the school lunch program has been criticized for serving meals that experts say are too high in fat, sugar and salt, and too low in fiber and complex carbohydrates. What was considered an all-American square meal in the old days is now seen as not only out of fashion but a contributor to such health problems as obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Recently, the Citizens Commission on School Nutrition called for school cafeterias to get rid of the empty calories and fatty foods on their menus and replace them with fruits, vegetables and other, healthier foods.

In Orange County and elsewhere, school lunch program administrators are doing their best to bring the meals they serve into the 1990s nutritionally. But the challenge is compounded not only by budget restraints but also by regulations and practices left over from the ‘50s.

Administrators are also stymied by children themselves, many of whom have already developed poor nutritional habits long before they arrive for that first day of school. And by parents, who don’t necessarily set the best examples.

The recent recommendations are nothing new to local school food service directors--they recognized the value of such things as complex carbohydrates long before they became trendy.

Susan McCann, director of food services for the Garden Grove Unified School District and a registered dietitian, has worked for 15 years to improve the nutritional quality of the foods served in her district.

“We knew all this stuff 20 years ago,” she says.

McCann is proud that her district’s meals have for the last several years had fat levels far below what most Americans eat.

Just 30% to 40% of the calories in the Garden Grove School District’s meals come from fat, compared with more than 50% on the average for the foods most of us eat at home or in restaurants. The Citizens Commission on School Nutrition report recommended that fat levels in school lunches be reduced to 30% of calories.

“A couple of years ago, we had our most popular foods tested,” McCann says. “And the percentage of calories from fat was within the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines.”

Rosalie Mayberry, director of food services for the Irvine Unified School District, says she and many of her colleagues would also like to have their menus analyzed. “But that’s very expensive,” she says.

Mayberry is a member of a Southern California Food Services Assn. committee formed to address the issue of improving nutrition. “We’re trying to find some standard menus and have them analyzed for the committee,” she says. “Then food service directors can adjust their meals accordingly.”

Mayberry says she and her colleagues across the state have been working for years to bring the meals they serve in line with current nutritional wisdom. “California is in the forefront and always has been on this issue,” she says. “We’ve been cutting down on fats and sugars for a long time.”

Last month, however, Irvine school lunch menus began highlighting certain meals that are particularly low in fat and sodium, such as the district’s “burrito light.” “We haven’t in the past advertised this kind of thing to let people know what we’re doing. But now we are,” Mayberry says.

Three years ago, Irvine cut out all added salt from its lunches, relying instead on other seasonings and spices, Mayberry says. “And we’ve cut down the sugar in our recipes by half. All our meat is drained completely before it’s put into anything.”

In Anaheim, high school students can now choose snacks such as fresh vegetables with dip or nuts and raisins in addition to more traditional--and less nutritious--offerings, says food service director Barry Sackin.

But since its beginning, the school lunch program has depended heavily on the federal government to provide free or reduced-cost food from the various commodity surplus and subsidized food programs. These included cheese, butter, milk, shortening, cooking oil and peanut butter.

“Most of the foods we get from the government are already high in fat, and we’re supposed to make something nutritious out of it,” McCann says. “You have to be really innovative. And even then, we end up purchasing the majority of our own food.”

For example, McCann says, she insists on ground beef that is at least 80% lean.

“We cook or bake most of our food from scratch,” she says. “We don’t fry any of our foods on the premises, and don’t own any deep fat fryers.”

Even fried chicken, she says, “is a thing of the past. Now it’s oven-baked. We have fresh fruit or a fresh vegetable on every menu.”

And high school students can even graze at the salad bar, just like diet-conscious adults.

Sackin says the dependence on government surplus foods “sometimes means we have to sacrifice our preferred choice for an economic decision. But if they offer us something, particularly in the protein area, we have to use it.”

In the ‘70s and ‘80s, that meant cheese, cheese and more cheese, but Sackin says the government now offers very little surplus cheese. “There’s still a lot of butter to be used,” he says. “In fact, it used to be required that every school lunch include a pat of butter.”

Mayberry, however, says she has no problem making healthy lunches from what the government surplus program offers.

“We take all we can get. We get oils, but we also get chicken, turkey, ground beef, peanuts, peanut butter, dried beans. The ground beef used to be really terrible. But now, if you drain it really well, you can do something with it. And the government is trying to improve what they offer. Their canned fruit is now packed in light syrup or in its own juices.

“We do get a lot of stuff we don’t know how we’re going to use,” she says, “but we try to find a way. We even make chocolate cake with prunes.”

It isn’t easy to manage all that for the price--85 cents to $1.25 a meal in Garden Grove, from $1.25 to $1.50 in Irvine and from $1.45 to $1.55 in Anaheim. But school lunch programs are under increasing pressure to be self-sufficient. “Given the state of the economy, school districts cannot subsidize lunch programs to the the extent they have in the past,” Sackin says. “So we are constantly balancing nutritional needs versus economic realities.”

The Garden Grove lunch program, for example, is self-sufficient, with government surplus foods accounting for only about 13 cents of the cost of each meal, according to McCann. But it does require compromises, such as offering apples day after day rather than more expensive seasonal fruits such as grapes or melons.

Other government regulations, however, require school lunch administrators to spend money on food that may very well go to waste. School districts nationwide are required to offer whole milk, with 3.5% dairy fat. In most districts, low-fat or nonfat milk is also available and often preferred to whole milk, but the rules require that whole milk be offered as well, even if it ultimately goes sour and must be thrown out.

McCann says children in her district have become so accustomed to low-fat milk that on those rare days when only whole milk is available, “a lot of them will come up and complain that there’s something wrong with the milk.”

Anaheim offers five choices in milk, from nonfat up to whole milk. “Kids by and large choose the low-fat milk,” Sackin says. “I would rather not be required to provide whole milk. It goes against the government’s stated purpose of lowering fat and sodium.”

In Tustin, parents at Hughes Middle School have organized a committee to work with the school to make lunch and snack offerings more nutritious.

“There was some concern in terms of the nutrition content of the foods,” says Leslie Eckerling, a parent who is also a registered dietitian. “They have a lot of empty-calorie-type foods, such as soft drinks, packaged cupcakes, cookies, coffee cakes. We want to find a way to plug in more nutritious type foods.”

The committee plans to conduct a survey to find more about what they eat and what they might like to eat before developing a plan.

“I’d like to see them substitute ground turkey for ground beef and serve low-fat cheese, but I don’t know if that’s economically feasible,” Eckerling says.

Money isn’t the only concern, however. “We thought about offering something like popcorn, which is high in fiber, to replace potato and corn chips, which are high in fat,” Eckerling says. “But the janitors pointed out that when you give 6th-, 7th- and 8th-graders popcorn, they throw it at each other.”

And no matter how much thought and effort goes into providing nutritious food, McCann says, “you’re nowhere if it doesn’t get eaten.”

Popeye may like cooked spinach, but kids don’t. “So we put the spinach in the salad,” McCann says.

“Nutrition does nobody any good in the trash,” Sackin says. “I remember when I was in another district, we had a dietetic intern with us who was working on a group project for one of her classes to come up with a more nutritious oatmeal cookie.

“And she and the students she was working with came up with a cookie that was absolutely loaded with nutrients. But nobody would eat it, so what was the point?”

Particularly with high school students, Sackin says, nutrition education is as important as anything on the menu. “We’ve met with our health education curriculum committee to improve the quality of nutrition information in the classroom. And we need as a society to focus more attention on nutritional aspects; parents have got to do a better job at home. Then if we offer the good choice and they take the good choice, everybody wins.”

BETTER MEALS

The National School Lunch Program serves meals to about 24 million children every school day. But those meals tend to be too high in fat, sodium and empty calories, and too low in fiber, according to a report by the Washington-based Citizens’ Committee on School Nutrition.

The commission’s recommendations include reducing cholesterol, sugar and certain food additives in lunches and increasing funding for both school lunches and nutritional education. Here’s how today’s school lunches contrast with what the committee would like them to be:

Percentage of Calories From Fat: Typical lunch: More than 40% Improved lunch: 35%, later reduced to 30%

Fat in Milk: Typical lunch: The current requirement is that whole milk( with 3.5% fat) be served. Improved lunch: Milk with 2% fat, later reduced to 1% or less

Sodium: Typical lunch: 2,000 milligrams Improved lunch: 1,000 milligrams, later reduced to 800 milligrams

Fiber: Typical lunch: Emphasis on processed fruits such as applesauce instead of apples Improved lunch: Serve more fresh fruit and vegetables for increased consumption of fiber

Junk food: Typical lunch: Availability of soft drinks, candy, potato chips and other relatively non-nutritious foods in on-campus vending machines. Improved lunch: Junk food would not be sold during school hours