Cafeteria Plans

Nutrition standards put healthy menus on the agenda

Here are some numbers to chew over: A generation ago, just 7 percent of children in the United States between the ages of 6 and 11 were considered obese, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These days, the figure has ballooned to 15 percent, and it’s even higher among teens and certain demographic groups.

The reasons are well known. American kids aren’t active enough: They watch an average of four hours of TV each day but spend less than two hours playing outside. Perhaps more to the point, they eat too much bad food. In that, they’re not unlike the rest of this nation, almost half of which—an estimated 127 million adults—qualifies as officially overweight or obese.

To be sure, these heavy numbers aren’t new to most educators, who have heard and seen them before. Responsible school leaders understand their import. Indeed, it has become accepted wisdom that nutritionally deficient children make academically impaired students.

“We’ve known for a long time that the body and mind work together,” says Tom Templin, a professor of health at Purdue University and president of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. “If kids aren’t healthy, their academic prowess is affected.”

Student health isn’t the primary mission of any school, of course, but it has become a de facto part of the job nonetheless.

 “What people are realizing everywhere is that schools didn’t create this obesity problem and that they’re not going to solve it alone, but they do have to be part of the solution,” says Martin Gonzalez, CSBA’s assistant executive director for Governance and Policy Services.

But being even part of the solution poses a growing challenge for school districts and leaders. The dietary habits of Americans have radically changed in recent decades. Home-cooked meals have given way to fast foods on the go. We are a nation of inveterate snackers, and the choices at hand tend to be prepackaged, high on calories and low on nutrition. 

“When I grew up, people went home and sat around a dinner table. You ate what your mother cooked. Now, everybody is on the run, everything is about convenience,” says Paul Idsvoog, food services director for Fresno Unified School District. “We live in a society where you can get almost anything you want—and lots of it. Kids know what they can buy.”

Such easy access is coupled in a one-two punch with inescapable promotion. Food and beverage companies spend $10 billion to $12 billion a year on advertising and marketing aimed specifically at the lucrative youth market. The 2003 California High School Fast Food Survey, commissioned by the Public Health Institute, a Sacramento-based think tank, found that 63 percent of school districts permit vendors like Coca-Cola, Taco Bell and Domino’s to advertise on campus, giving them ready access to young consumers, as well as exposure that presumably lends credibility to their products.

It should not be surprising, then, that heavily advertised foods and snacks are what most students demand. That food study also reported that items like pizza, chips and soda generated up to 60 percent of food service operating budgets.

“Most food service operations are self-supporting, which can create a barrier to change,” says Gonzalez. “Many districts see or fear a decline in needed revenue if they stop selling the foods kids want to buy.”

Cutting out the fat—and sugar
But change is coming all the same. On July 1 of this year, Senate Bill 12 (passed in 2005) kicks in, strengthening and expanding food standards for all California public schools, kindergarten through high school. Specifically, the law does two things:

First, it establishes limits on fat and sugar content for all foods sold a la carte, in vending machines, in school stores and in school-sponsored fund-raisers. For example, no snack may derive more than 35 percent of its calories from fat (with certain exceptions like legumes and cheese). Sugar cannot exceed 35 percent of the product by weight (excluding fruits and vegetables.) A snack cannot contain more than 150 calories if sold at elementary schools, 250 calories if sold in middle or high schools.

Second, school lunches or entrees may contain no more than 4 grams of fat per 100 calories. They may not exceed 400 calories. And they must comply with federal meal program requirements. 

At the same time SB 12 takes effect, so too does SB 965, which was also passed in 2005 and is designed to ultimately eliminate the sale of soda and other sweetened beverages on high school campuses. As of July 1, at least half of all beverages sold to pupils during school hours must be fruit- or vegetable-based drinks consisting of at least 50 percent real fruit or vegetable juice with no added sweeteners. Bottled waters cannot contain added sweeteners. Milk must be low-fat or non-fat. Within two more years—by July 1, 2009—all beverages sold on high school campuses must meet these standards. Similar laws already apply to elementary and middle schools in California.

These are dramatic steps, but as Karen Bellacera, a registered dietician and consultant for CSBA’s Student Wellness program, notes, “California has long been on the forefront on these issues.”

As a result, Bellacera says, California school districts generally appear to be in pretty good shape for the new laws. Many have already implemented some or most of the requirements ahead of the deadline.
“Five or 10 years ago, we probably would have heard a larger outcry about doing some of these things, but people realize that we have to change,” Bellacera says. “It’s similar to what’s happened with tobacco control. When people were first told they couldn’t smoke in restaurants, there was a lot of opposition; now people are appalled if they see a lit cigarette in a restaurant. The situation with obesity and student health simply demands that we act.”

The big question for most school districts is how, exactly, to act. Which foods are healthy? Can they be prepared and served in a cost-effective way? Will students actually buy and eat them?

“Food services is one of the most difficult and thankless jobs in a school district,” says Bellacera. “Nobody on the outside—students, parents, teachers, principals, boards—really has any idea what goes into creating and providing meals. School food services have minuscule budgets that they have to stay within and still offer foods that are pleasing and will sell.”

Passing the taste test
Nonetheless, success stories aren’t rare, and recipes for successful ideas abound.

Nancy Whalen is a registered dietician who oversees food services at Clovis Unified School District. She says her district began moving away from a la carte food sales last year. Clovis cafeterias emphasize full meals: an entree, two sides and milk. “We want students to eat a balanced, nutritious meal, which they might not if they bought a la carte. And combo meal sales have increased 90 percent,” Whalen remarks.

With fewer a la carte items available, of course, part of that rise is because combo meals may be the only satisfying option for hungry students. But Whalen and her staff must still make the meals that appeal to students’ notoriously finicky appetites. And the fare must be convenient; studies have shown that students will forego lunch if it means walking across campus to get it. (One response by some districts has been to set up food carts around campus.)
To attract and feed the greatest numbers, Whalen and her staff provide as much menu diversity as they can, featuring low-fat versions of foods near and dear to the hearts and stomachs of kids. Elementary students have a choice of three entrees daily; secondary students have eight choices. The choices include salads, cheeseburgers, pizza and egg rolls—all prepared in the healthiest way possible. Corn dogs, for example, are low-fat and whole grain; egg rolls are baked, not fried.

“A pizza made and served at school isn’t like a pie from Pizza Hut,” says Bellacera, approvingly. “It’s much healthier, with whole wheat flour, low-fat cheese and sauce rich in vitamin C. Of course, students may not realize that. If it tastes good and it’s what they know and expect, they’re happy.”
But finding healthy foods that make students happy isn’t easy. Given the realities of budgets and staffing, school meals “have to be simple to serve, fast and cheap,” says Lynnelle Grumbles, president of the California School Nutrition Association and director of child nutrition for Visalia Unified School District.

Grumbles says many private food vendors have been slow to respond to the new standards set by SB 12 and other laws. Even though California is a large and lucrative market, some vendors are reluctant to change products that are still acceptable elsewhere. Plus, reformulating existing recipes isn’t easy, and it can be a gamble for companies. But Grumbles remains optimistic that vendors will eventually expand their offerings as demand grows and more states follow California’s example.

Indeed, the rest of the country may soon be ordering off the Golden State’s policy menu. The Institute of Medicine published a report this spring that lays out principles and guidelines similar to California’s. Commissioned by Congress, “Nutrition Standards for Healthy Schools” says federal school meal programs should be the primary source of foods and beverages at schools, and that nutrition standards should be established for other foods and drinks sold.
The study recommends that so-called “competitive foods”— foods outside of the federal school meal program—be required to meet national dietary guidelines if they are allowed on campus at all. With its congressional imprimatur, the report is expected to have a significant impact on the chances for federal nutrition standards to be mandated on foods sold in schools.

In the meantime, schools can and are taking lessons from the food industry.

Idsvoog, the food services director at Fresno Unified, had come to the district from previous positions at Fresno State University and with contract food companies. His business experience emphasized knowing your target audience and marketing to it.

He says the same focus is necessary in K-12 food services. “My philosophy is that kids will eat healthy food if you just package it right. It has to look like what they know and like. They grow up with fast food so, for example, our rice bowls look like Chinese take-out. Our salads come in clear, plastic containers, instead of Styrofoam. Our sandwich bars let kids add their own toppings, just like they might do outside of school or at home.”

‘Edible Education’
Mimicking aspects of the commercial food industry offers some fast help, but lasting benefits come only from real education.

“We cannot change the fast food climate,” says Donna Richwine, a nutrition specialist at Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, “but we can try to educate our students about the importance of choosing healthy foods most of the time. Our nutrition education program is called Edible Education and focuses on eating more fruits and vegetables, whole grains and high calcium foods, low-fat foods and less sugar. That sounds like a lot, but we do it in stages so that each grade level receives only one or two messages, but the message builds as students advance through the grade levels.”

Districts can be creative about the lessons. One example, cited by Gonzalez, is using students as taste-testers. “You enlist their support in determining what’s being sold in school. Some districts introduce new foods to kids in the classroom. They’ll bring in a fruit that kids have never seen before, like a kiwi or a star apple. It’s educational. It opens up their palates. And it may provide another item for the menu.”
And educators aren’t the only ones digesting all the upsetting stories about nutrition and wellness, says Nancy Mealer, health and wellness program manager at Clovis Unified. Students have themselves become very aware of the nation’s health problems, the rise in obesity and the need to eat better. They’ve seen the same numbers.

“They know more than we give them credit for,” Mealer says. “Once they see the benefits of eating healthy, the majority of kids are OK with it. You just don’t want to take stuff away without giving them information about why.”
Scott LaFee is a contributing writer for California Schools.

Wellness Conference coming to Anaheim

For most school districts and leaders, the goals of improved student nutrition are clear enough. They know where they want to be, where they need to be, but not necessarily how to get there. To help point the way, CSBA, working with California Project LEAN (Leaders Encouraging Activity and Nutrition) and others, has sponsored workshops around the state over the last year to help school leaders understand the scope of the problem and what they need to do.
This fall, CSBA and California’s departments of Education and Health Services will go one step further, co-hosting the first-ever School Wellness Conference at the Anaheim Marriott Oct. 1-2. The two-day conference will bring together school governance teams, teachers, staff, students, parents, community health advocates, nutritionists, public health officials and vendors to discuss a wide range of subjects.

“I think we’re past the stage of debating the problem or the reasons. That’s generally agreed upon,” says Martin Gonzalez, CSBA’s assistant executive director for Governance and Policy Services, who’s helping organize the Wellness Conference. “The phase now is implementation. People are looking for ideas or best practices. They are struggling to find concrete models or examples of what works. “The whole premise of the conference is to have practitioners and decision-makers who are looking for models and best practices come together to share ideas, to assess what’s working and what needs to be changed.” In other words, to give everybody plenty of (healthy) food for thought.