Bean Institute

Healthy Food on the Menu
Matters to our Children

By Chef Ann Cooper     

Not a day goes by without the media addressing America’s growing obesity crisis, and lately the discussion has settled on our children. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported that if American children don’t get their weight in check, their anticipated health problems will significantly shorten their lives, and make them the first generation in our nation’s history to die at younger ages than their parents.  In fact the CDC has said, of the children born in the year 2000, one out of every three Caucasians and one out of every two African Americans and Hispanics will contract diabetes in their lifetime, many before they graduate high school.     

With students now back at their desks, lunchrooms are bustling once again with the rekindling of friendships, brown paper sacks, and lunch trays full of school food.    But what of the state of school food, is it getting better?  Are we feeding kids healthier?  Why should healthy school food matter to every one of us?     

Typical School Lunch

A typical school lunch often consists of some combination of pizza, burgers, nachos, fries and tater tots, all slathered in ketchup and ranch dressing, all served with a side of sugary flavored milk.  There is no doubt in my mind that these mediocre school lunches are contributing to the obesity crisis and – that if we do not take action     

NOW to make school lunch healthy – we will all pay the price in healthcare costs, and more importantly the shortened lives of those who are most important to us.     

The solution to our health crisis must include dramatic improvements to our National School Lunch Program (NSLP) because so many children depend on it. Each day the NSLP feeds over 31 million children, and those numbers are rising as our economy sinks. School lunches are often contributing to this rise in obesity; and diet-related illnesses loom over our children due to the gradual effects bad food has on their health.     

Healthy School Lunch

A healthy school-lunch program eliminates highly processed foods and puts an emphasis on fresh whole foods cooked from scratch. But, as you might imagine, choosing fresh, healthy food presents schools with all kinds of challenges. Unlike those of 20 or 30 years ago, most of the cafeterias in today’s schools lack fully functional kitchens and the trained staff to operate them, which makes actual cooking a virtual impossibility. Additionally, inadequate funding makes it extremely difficult to shift from highly processed to fresh whole food. 

There are many kinds of whole foods that can be added to our kid’s meals; beans are one such food that can be a perfect addition to school lunch menus.  Beans have so many good qualities that can enhance a school lunch meal: high in nutritional value including protein, great flavor, texture and taste, low cost, and ease of preparation.  In my position as director of food services for Boulder Valley School District, I oversee meals that include beans as part of numerous entrees as well as in salads and side dishes.  In a typical week, we might serve lunches such as bean and cheese burritos, tacos, quesadillas, nachos or hummus wraps as well as side dishes that include hummus, pinto beans, refried beans, red beans and rice, black bean and corn salad as well as beans in many forms on our salad bars.     

How Do Commodities Fit?

    

All of these dishes are made from scratch, require a modest amount of preparation time, limited equipment, and have a reasonably low food cost – all of which are important attributes when overcoming the challenges of segueing from processed foods to scratch cooking.  Another piece of the school food paradigm is commodity foods.  These are foods that come from the USDA and are distributed to schools on the basis of 19½ cents for every lunch served.  Dried and canned beans are always part of the commodity allocations, which means that they can help lower food costs while allowing the utilization of whole foods.  This savings can then be allocated to fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, whole grains and healthy proteins, as well as the implementation of salad bars, which I believe is one of the best ways to add healthy, fresh, delicious food to school meals.     

In school districts all across the country, we are seeing a rise in vegetarian options.  In fact, meatless options often account for 20% of our lunches.  Given the National School Lunch guidelines on protein combined with our need to reduce fat (especially saturated fat) in school meals, beans can become a mainstay of healthy school lunches.     

Facing the Challenges

    

Of all the challenges in school food reform, one of the largest is finance and part of the solution is participation; we need more kids eating, so whether they or their parents choose school lunch because it tastes good, is vegetarian, or is healthy – it’s more kids eating that really makes a difference.  And making a difference is what we must do!  Overcoming the challenges to reforming school food is a must for the health of our children and their future.     

The five major challenges to making school food healthier are: food, finance, facilities, human resources and marketing.     

FOOD: To effectively implement a healthier school lunch program, we need to eliminate:     

• Highly processed foods        

• Trans fats     

• High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)     

• Fried foods     

• Refined sugars and flours     

• Hormones and antibiotics     

• Vending machines containing soda, candy, and chips     

• Competitive foods – foods that are sold in school cafeterias but that are not part of the National School Lunch Program and are therefore not regulated by USDA policies (the recently passed Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act will eventually give authority over these types of foods to the USDA). This means that, day after day, children with money can buy such unhealthy items as fried foods, cookies, sodas, slushees, and chips.     

We should institute:     

• Gardening classes       

• Tastings and Rainbow Days held in cafeterias, as well as during cooking and gardening classes, are a great way to get students to try unfamiliar foods.  Even something as simple as tasting different varieties of the same type of fruit can be a palate-widening experience for children.     

• 30-minute lunch periods      

*Recess before lunch      

• Salad Bars      

• Cooking from scratch absolutely must be the focus of any healthy school lunch program. Schools across the nation need to say good-bye to chicken nuggets and hello to roast chicken, toss out the French fries and get busy roasting potatoes and other colorful root vegetables. Canned fruits and vegetables should move over and make room for fresh ones.  The Lunch Box website has all the tools schools need to help cook and serve healthier food.     

    

FACILITIES: Building, rebuilding or retrofitting cooking facilities is a mandatory part of the change toward a healthier school food system.     

FINANCING: All US public schools need more money to adequately finance their breakfast and lunch programs. Currently, the federal reimbursement rate is $2.77 per lunch. Most schools spend less than $1 on food per child per day and this is just not enough.     

HUMAN RESOURCES: Unlike school cafeteria staff of the past, most of today’s kitchen workers lack adequate food service training.  If we want better food for our children, then we have to hire, train, and adequately compensate professional staff.     

MARKETING: It’s one thing to make the food, another to get kids to eat it. Many successful school lunch programs around the country have employed traditional marketing techniques that treat children as potential customers: they “sell” the food. Attractive advertising, packaging, and service have been shown to increase consumption of a larger variety of school lunch foods.    

     

       

About the Author      

Chef Ann Cooper is an author, chef, educator and advocate for better food for all children.  She is a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and is currently director of food services for the Boulder Valley (Colorado) School District.