School Lunch Plan Is Too Much to Swallow, Critics Say : Nutrition: A consultant to Orange County schools questions research that resulted in new regulations.

Nutrient-enriched, fruit-flavored juice to drink. Gelatin fortified with powdered vitamins to eat.

Fare like this could soon become standard in school cafeterias if the federal government’s planned overhaul of the school lunch system goes into effect, a school food workers’ organization, the national Parent-Teacher Assn. and some nutritionists charged Wednesday.

The group said the government’s new requirement for minimum nutritional content would cause a bureaucratic nightmare for school systems, which serve more than 25 million federally subsidized lunches daily at 93,000 schools, and does not jibe with what actually should make up a meal.

“We don’t eat chemistry, we eat food,” said Penny McConnell, president-elect of the American School Food Service Assn. and the director of food services for Fairfax, Va., schools.

The new system would be like shopping for protein, carbohydrates and calcium at the grocery store instead of for chicken, rice and milk, she said.

But the government and other nutritionists charge that therein lies the problem: Schools are not serving well-balanced servings of chicken, rice and other healthful foods but rather fat-laden junk food that many families would not serve their pets.

Under the proposed reform--the biggest change in the program in its almost 50 years of existence--schools would be required to analyze the menus they serve each week to ensure that they meet minimum standards for nutrients, calories and fiber and do not exceed federal requirements that no more than 30% of calories come from fat and no more than 10% from saturated fat.

A Department of Agriculture report released last fall showed that meals served at 99% of participating schools did not meet the proposed nutrition guidelines, with an average of 38% of calories coming from fat and 15% from saturated fat. It also showed that the sodium content was almost twice the recommended level.

Congress mandated in 1989 that the secretary of agriculture make sure that school lunches comply with federal nutrition guidelines, but the department had failed to act until this year.

Schools would be given until 1998 to comply. After that, they would be reimbursed for meals only if they meet the standards. The federal government subsidizes all lunches to some extent and fully pays for 40% of the lunches served to low-income students.

Critics also charged that the new regulations would force schools to cut back on the variety of foods offered, making it harder to please children’s finicky appetites.

“The proposed regulations would take school lunch back in time to the ‘70s when trash cans were full of food that children were forced to take, but could not be forced to eat,” Jan Monforte, president of the California Food Service Assn., complained in a letter to the Agriculture Department.

“We feel the facts and research they did were not sufficient,” said Monforte, a Fullerton resident who is also a nutrition consultant for Orange County school districts. “We are certainly recommending the regulations for the new menus be optional as opposed to mandatory.”

The California association’s vice president, Judy Ross, said some active children may need more than the 30% maximum fat level allowed for in the reform plan, and that the new menus also should address fresh fruit and sodium intake. Ross, who is nutrition service director for the Orange Unified School District, said children might choose not to eat the meals.

“It sounds great if you’re a medical doctor, but for those of us who are nutrition professionals and see children every day, we know children have a choice.”

Times correspondent Lynn Franey in Orange County contributed to this report.