School lunches in need of a facelift

By Courtney West

School lunches may be getting a healthy makeover, steering away from former staples like pizza and nachos.

The Tuesday, Feb, 28, meeting of the Poudre School District (PSD) Board of Education revolved around the topic of nutrition in school lunches.
Community speakers said that they felt that schools need to offer healthier choices, but that they also need to appeal to students, especially when they have the option of leaving campus.
“If an item is healthy and students aren’t eating it, it’s not doing them any good,” said Craig Schneider, dietician and Director of Child Nutrition at PSD.
Deirdre Sullivan, a member of the School Nutrition Action Council (SNAC) came to the podium to discuss changes to the system of school lunches. She introduced the idea of nutrition being a learning process, referring to the kitchen staff as “lunch teachers, not just lunch ladies,” and stressing the importance of such ideas as utilizing local produce, scratch cooking and not serving items with “ingredients lists that take up half a page.”
Scratch cooking, according to Schneider, is cooking that involves combining minimally processed food items together on site to create items such as chicken burritos, vegetarian lasagna and other healthier items than frozen, processed and reheated menu items.
Another dietician, Virginia Clark, also spoke about the nutrition in school lunches and proposed changes that could be implemented to take the district from “good” to “great,” in the words of PSD Board of Education President Thomas Balchak.
Clark, a member of the Coalition for Activity and Nutrition to Defeat Obesity, or CanDo, stated that school nutrition is directly linked to school performance, which is why it is such an important issue.
CanDo consists of both individuals and organizations that assist Colorado communities to “defeat the damaging effects of obesity through healthier living,” according to its website (www.candoonline.org/fort-collins).
Clark’s agency has been involved with PSD to help schools create healthier meals that students enjoy.
Healthier meal options and entrees, meals made from unprocessed or minimally processed foods, a decreased amount of sugar-sweetened beverages and an overall consistent health message were possible solutions presented by Clark.
She further suggested that a comprehensive food service assessment was in order to see the areas in which PSD falls short concerning current nutrition issues. A similar survey has already been completed by her agency, but she emphasized the importance of a follow-up survey to determine what more the district could do in the coming years.
The agency is not a direct part of PSD, so they would give an “outside objective view” to school nutrition, which would result in a final report “specific to the Poudre School District” with ideas for yearly goals, said Clark.
Schneider echoed many of Clark’s ideas in his presentation. He focused on ideas like scratch cooking, an increase of local and organic foods and a decrease in overly processed foods with added preservatives “to increase shelf life.”
He was also in favor of a food advisory panel with an updated food survey to get parents’ opinions on school nutrition. In his plan of action, he suggested an outside program evaluation that would rank where the district stood in terms of nutrition.
The board of education asked a few questions but did not offer a lot of counterpoints to either Clark or Schneider’s presentations. However, financial issues were a small point of contention.
Patrick Albright, a director on the PSD Board of Education, said that he agreed with the need to beef up nutrition, but pointed out that he did not feel a complete overhaul was necessary. He said that he did not feel that the nutrition system was broken, and that he did not want to fix it until it was, among cheers from the audience.

Cafeteria Conundrums

PSD community divided on topic of nutrition in schools

by Colleen Canty

Money talks, but when it comes to school districts, so does pizza.

Although Poudre School District (PSD) may be above the national average in the arena of nutritional meal programs – offering a menu increasingly peppered with local food products, scratch food recipes and unprocessed food components – the topic of school lunch is as hot as the nacho cheese served every Friday.

At Tuesday's PSD Board of Education Meeting, all sides of the lunch line fought over proposals for a comprehensive food service assessment and school meal reform – and what it all means for families' and schools' wallets.

The road to healthier meal choices in schools means burning more money to get there: approximately 5 percent more than what is already being spent, according to Craig Schneider, director of child nutrition for PSD.

Introducing fresh produce in lieu of canned, home-cooked meal recipes instead of “ready to assemble” and increased nutrition education, awareness and training for those whose hands create the food and mouths consume it, means dipping into wallets that are already thin to begin with.

Thomas Balchak, PSD Board of Education director and president, said the school district is serving more low income children than ever before. According to Schneider, 60 percent of PSD's school meals are consumed by students on free and reduced lunch meal plans, meaning cost burdens fall entirely on those who don't qualify.

“And for those families who sit just above the threshold to qualify, they are the ones who are going to incur the cost increase,” said PSD board director Patrick Albright. “What if they can't afford lunch anymore? Some students, mainly in middle schools, are coming to school without meals already.”

Not only did many cafeteria workers, parents and teachers in the room feel as though schools could not sustain escalating food prices for healthier options, they simply didn't see a need for them.

“My kids have more of a choice at their school than they do at our home,” said Patty Dale, a cafeteria employee within the district. “I just can't afford all the vegetables they offer; I don't think we have a problem. We do a fantastic job.”

But according to obesity prevention supervisor at Poudre Valley Health System Virginia Clark, if PSD strives to exceed benchmarks set in academic areas, health and nutrition goals shouldn't be out of the question.

“Colorado is ranked 29^th for child obesity,” Clark said during her presentation detailing her and partnered School Nutrition Action Committee's (SNAC) concerns about the food currently being offered in school. “Kids receive a significant value of nutrition from their school; they're the models for what's okay. If pizza is being offered everyday, we need to ask how often we should allow kids to eat certain foods.”

The Comprehensive Food Assessment, advocated for by Clark, would aim to provide a clear snapshot of what's happening in school cafeterias now, work with health professionals and the community to find ways to improve it and develop a review system to gauge students' reactions and the changes' success.

While some board members seemed hesitant about the reform possibly squelching food options and enacting too tightly monitored policies, SNAC pushed the issue into the meeting room and are passionate about seeing it through.

“My daughter got home from school and I found 60 dumdum wrappers accumulated in her backpack,” said Mary Van Buren, SNAC member and PSD parent. “It's an ironic treat schools are giving our kids. It's like throwing treats to the dogs.”