Food for Thought : Tough Assignment: Nutritious School Lunches for Finicky Palates

A barbecued “beef” sandwich or a bowl of chili, both made with processed turkey, are healthier menu items for schoolchildren than those prepared with red meat.

But if students won’t eat the food because it tastes bad, school food planners are only throwing money away on something that will end up in the garbage can, and their painstaking march toward better nutrition will become even harder to sustain.

So last week students at San Diego and University City high schools tried out the two turkey treats, along with alternatives made with ground beef--experimental products being tested by Keebler Co. of Illinois to see if they’ll fly with finicky secondary school students.

“The second one (turkey barbecue) definitely was better,” University City junior Yoony Kim said. “It was different beef somehow, but the first one (ground beef) was sort of dry.”

Wrong, chimed in classmate Russ Gum. “The first one looked a lot better, for starters, and the second one was sort of oozing out of the bun everywhere.”

Added Taura Gentry: “It all tasted like food at the stadium.”

The same clash of opinions took place at San Diego High, with some finding the turkey chili too bland compared to the beef, and vice versa.

And what do students think of the health aspects of food?

“Not many people think about it at all,” Kim said.

Therein lies the major dilemma facing school cafeteria administrators trying to meet demands by medical and children’s health groups for improved nutritional content of food.

How do they introduce better foods and better eating habits to a fast-food generation? A generation accustomed not only to having hamburgers, french fries and Coke for a typical lunch, but to having pizza, fried chicken, tacos and roast-beef sandwiches for dinner, put on the table by harried parents often too busy to cook traditional balanced family meals.

“The bottom line is that kids won’t eat stuff if they don’t like it,” said Sue Gilroy, a food planner for the San Diego Unified School District, the nation’s eighth-largest urban system. “And we have to satisfy the kids,” she said, in order not to lose money, which would mean higher prices since food operations are self-supporting. San Diego Unified served 11.5 million breakfasts and lunches last year to its 122,000 students, on a $23.6-million budget.

Vista Unified has walked a fine line for the past two years, trying a variety of ways to lower fat, salt and sugar content in the menus. It is one of four school districts in the United States participating in a UC San Diego project to improve children’s health.

No school district, whether in San Diego County or nationwide, is satisfied with present menus.

Two weeks ago, every hamburger served one day districtwide in San Diego Unified--and hamburgers number in the thousands every day--was of a lean variety, similar to the new McLean burger being tried by McDonald’s. While elementary students seemed to take to the experiment all right--”We did see a lot more use of ketchup that day,” Gilroy conceded--many at the junior and senior high levels returned the burgers uneaten, pronouncing them “nasty.”

For Gilroy and others, the test re-emphasized the fact that students will not readily abandon greasy, fried foods for low-fat burgers, salad bars or fresh fruit substitutes.

At Mira Mesa High last Tuesday, the lunchtime fare included hamburgers; tacos; pizza slices (both school-made and Pizza Hut-delivered); Twinkies; doughnuts; Cokes; Ruffles, Cheetos and Doritos snack chips; ice cream bars; chocolate milk; apple pie; cheese-covered french fries, and Cajun spicy fries. Bananas, oranges, yogurt and egg-salad sandwiches were also available.

These days, almost no secondary-level school offers a tray meal--with an entree, vegetable and dessert--because it would not sell and would lead to mounds of discarded food.

Mira Mesa Principal Jim Vlassis--a victim of a heart attack a few years ago who knows the value of careful eating--shook his head as he wandered among the food carts positioned throughout the campus. Student after student lined up for doughnuts and a Coke, or fries and chocolate milk, or a couple of hamburgers, a slice of pizza and a soft drink.

Those not satisfied with the school’s version of “junk food” clutched bags from McDonald’s and other fast-food outlets visited during the half-hour lunch break. (All high schools in San Diego Unified allow students to leave during lunch.)

“We’ve had nutrition shoved down our throats for so many years by our parents that we want to make our own decisions,” a member of the school’s varsity baseball team told Vlassis when kidded about his powdered doughnuts and pizza. “We’ll get our balanced meal at home.”

There have been some subtle improvements in the health content of foods. French fries are either baked or deep-fried in low-cholesterol oil, hot dogs and luncheon meats contain processed turkey, salad dressings and mayonnaise contain less fat, and whole wheat is used more often in baking.

Most elementary schools have salad bars, which have proved popular and easy to operate. Students in kindergarten through sixth-grade do not choose food; they receive tray meals and move through the cafeteria in a single line.

A committee of students, parents and teachers was set up at Wilson Middle School last fall after teachers complained that students were getting too much fat and sugar, adding to tension and hyperactivity on the tiny campus, which, at 2,000 students, is 150 over capacity.

After months of discussions, doughnuts, cupcakes and other sweets have been removed from the menu, resource teacher Claudia Records said. And international meals are now served once a week, reflecting on Wilson’s student population that is divided almost equally between Latino, Indochinese, African-American and white.

Rice is now served fluffy-style, similar to that prepared in Asian homes, instead of the sticky kind that students left on their plates. Salt shakers have been taken away and ketchup is now served in small packets rather than in large containers.

And special food carts, labeled with “New Directions” signs, serve yogurt, mineral water, fruit and salads.

“I think more and more students have been willing to try the items,” Records said. But the going can be rough. Black or Latino kids, for example, take one look at an Oriental salad, with water chestnuts, collards, fruit and chicken bits, and say “yuck!” without having any idea how it tastes, Records said.

“Clearly, changing ideas and attitudes is so hard, but I hate to see students growing up eating only one or two types of foods without thinking there are any other kinds.”

The Wilson committee has also asked that hamburgers and french fries be served only twice a week and that more fish and rolled tacos be put on the menu.

Gilroy said San Diego is moving toward different foods, depending on where a school is located. Schools in Southeast San Diego, with large populations of African-American and Latino students, probably need spicier items compared to those in the city’s northern tier, she said.

Gilroy cited the “brunch-for-lunch” menu of waffles and sausage that, while popular at schools north of Interstate 8, brought an avalanche of complaints from parents when first served to their children at schools south of the freeway.

“We’ve done a lot of screwball things over the years,” she laughed. Fish tacos “bombed” three years ago, she said, but probably would do fine today because of their new popularity. A roving “barbecue” of hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, baked beans and pasta salad has been “wildly popular” as it has moved from school to school throughout the year.

“In fact, we’ve had to turn away some requests from schools and (reschedule) them already for next year,” said Sandra Crawford, another food service planner with San Diego Unified.

School districts receive large amounts of butter, ground beef, beans, cheese, flour, salad dressings and canned fruits and vegetables at low cost from the federal government’s commodity foods program.

The items, bought by the government from farmers’ excess, are resold to schools and hospitals, which must figure out ways to reduce the fat and/or salt content.

“We ‘defat’ all the ground beef we receive,” Enid Hohn, head of child nutrition for the Vista district, said. The defatting, elimination of premade seasoning salts and use of no-salt tortilla chips are some of the steps taken by Vista as part of the UCSD-sponsored study.

“We’re trying a turkey and bean and cheese burrito because it has only one-third the calories of a regular one,” Hohn said.

For many kids, the key to acceptance is in the marketing, she said.

“We wrap the burritos in bright red and green and purple paper so the kids see these bright colors as attractive and don’t really pick up on any (taste) difference,” she said. “It’s just like the (McDonald’s) Happy Meal pack. We serve something similar in elementary schools and our lunch count goes through the roof because the kids identify with it.” (It includes a carrot, celery stick, cookie, potato triangle and a hamburger.)

For breakfast, Hohn is gradually trying to wean students from Fruit Loops sugared cereal by mixing in Cheerios. “You’ve got to slowly make the changes,” she said.

All the food service managers emphasized that nutrition must be part of the health curriculum if long-lasting changes on menus are to stick.

“We’ve got to get the word to teachers to coordinate lesson plans on nutrition with menus somehow,” said Hohn, who headed food operations in the Oceanside school district and at Long Beach State University before coming to Vista. “But we haven’t been looked upon as an academic enterprise up until now.”

At Wilson, resource teacher Records said teachers talked about nutrition for several weeks when the new food cart items were introduced. “But we need to do more in the long run, sure, since students still like the fries and hamburgers.”

UC Davis, in cooperation with 4-H clubs, has put together a new nutrition curriculum for grades 2 through 5 that is available to any interested district.

“It’s just getting started, but we’re trying to work with kids to change eating habits,” Pat Margolis of 4-H said. “And that’s difficult for anyone, even adults, as you well know.”

The approach will be heavy on hands-on activities, such as having the students make new foods and then try them.

“Let them see that potatoes can be baked or stuffed with cheese rather than always fried. . . . We’re going to make games out of foods, give awards for trying a new food.

“It’s not to tell them ‘no,’ but to have them see foods in a different way.”