Food Fight

By TOM MULLEN

Community members and nutritional experts voiced their opinions and ideas to the Poudre District Board of Education in an effort to better understand the problem of serving more nutritional school lunches and propose possible solutions.

Judging from the amount of discussion and deliberation displayed at the PSD’s Board of Education 6:30 p.m. meeting, food reform is a hot issue. For the better part of three hours the topic discussed concerns the current food service programs within schools. After the call to order and approval of agenda, Board President Thomas Balchak opened the meeting to community comment.

Darleen Laubenstein, Kitchen Manager for Fossil Ridge High School, first voiced her thoughts on how a change in the current school lunch menus will encourage kids to leave campus for lunch. Community member Monica Morrison also shared her concern for losing students due to changes and that she was satisfied with the current menu.

PSD Nutrition Substitute, Patti Dale, argued that the variety of fruits and vegetables offered during school lunches provides plenty healthy choices for students whose families might not be able to afford them. She concluded that there is “no problem with school lunches.”

Later on in the meeting after discussing some other topics the focus is again brought back to nutritional services in schools. Virginia Clark, a registered dietitian and member of The Coalition for Activity and Nutrition to Defeat Obesity (CanDo), gave a presentation on current food service programs and possible changes that can be made. Clark cited many statistics taken from a food services parent survey to argue the changes she said she feels should be made such as creating more healthy main entrees and improving the overall quality of food. According to the survey, 65 percent of the current entrees have more than 10 percent saturated fats, 35 percent have over 800 milligrams of sodium, and 75 percent have less than five grams of fiber. She concluded that a comprehensive food service assessment is needed to “provide a clear snapshot of existing operations” in order to decided which steps to take

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A second presentation was given by Craig Schnider, a representative from Child Nutrition Programs, an organization that assists schools in providing nutritional meals. Schnider reiterated some of the ideas presented in Clark’s presentation such as the idea of trying to increase scratch cooking and the continual quality improvement of the food served in schools. He also supported the idea of a program evaluation in order to see what is being done right and where to go from here.

Following the presentations the board members questioned Clark and Schnider on some of their ideas and look for clarity on some of the solutions proposed such as how their supposed changes would affect costs and staff. The dietitians answered their questions stating that though many of their ideas will likely increase costs and staff workloads, they are for the best. Though the topic is discussed for some time no decisions were made by the board regarding food reform so far.