I stand for#RealSchoolFood

I stand for & believe wholeheartedly in #RealSchoolFood.  I mean, of course I do…. who wouldn’t?  Would you stand for #FakeSchoolFood? 

School Meal in RSU #14 with Local Grass Fed Beef, Local apple,
fresh lettuce & tomato

The thing is… we’ve been working towards and serving #RealSchoolFood for years now. Many of my colleagues in School Nutrition have been doing the same thing… serving up locally sourced food, Farm to School and #RealSchoolFood.   We’ve been working at this step by step, recipe by recipe.  It is exciting and rewarding… and a lot of work.  It takes a lot of work, a dedicated staff, a district with vision, and … a lot of money.

Our path to #RealSchoolFood didn’t start with a bunch of celebrities supporting a social media campaign, nudging us toward more wholesome food in our child nutrition program.  Our path to #RealSchoolFood began with a vision and a grant.  The vision of our district was to increase local foods & to begin preparing more of our menu items from scratch.  We were fortunate enough to receive grant funds to support our vision.  Grant funds to pay for food service equipment, grant funds to support staff development & culinary training.  Even so… the transition to #RealSchoolFood does not happen quickly or easily.  It is a process that doesn’t happen overnight, but menu item by menu item.  It involves educating our customers, taste testing and nutrition education. 

Believe it or not, our customers frequently come to us without a lot of experience with #RealFood.   We recently had a baked potato bar on the menu, and many of our young students did not even know what a baked potato was.  And we live in Maine, where potatoes are our #1 crop.    And so, in spite of all our efforts to serve and market #RealSchoolFood, our most popular lunch menus are often our most processed items.  Because of this, we educate our customers.  We taste test, we let them name our recipes, we talk to them about the health benefits of eating less processed food.   It's baby steps, one recipe or menu item at a time.  And we hope it’s working. 

Students at Jordan Small Middle School LOVED our panko crusted
zucchini "fries".

#RealSchoolFood also costs more money.  At least, this has been our experience.  And with our current federal reimbursement rate of approximately $3.00 per school lunch, we are barely breaking even.  This $3 per lunch is intended to cover all food, supply, labor (including benefits) and miscellaneous costs that it takes to make a lunch.  Cooking #RealSchoolFood takes more equipment, more staff, and more staff training to serve up food that doesn’t go from freezer to oven.  It takes time, culinary expertise, marketing & educating the students and their families.   Our district is fortunate, and because of our vision, we have been able to have a full time chef on staff.  Chef Sam not only works with our staff, developing their culinary skills and working on recipes, she also goes into the classroom and works with the students, taste testing & developing new menu items. 

Chef Sam taste tests curried carrot soup
with a group of students.

I guess all this is to really say – if you support #RealSchoolFood, support greater funding for the National School Lunch Program.  And visit your local school to see what they are serving.  Do they have the capacity to serve #RealSchoolFood?  The equipment? The storage space?  The expertise?  The money? Make sure you understand, not only the USDA guidelines, but also the financial component of the National School Lunch Program, and see what real #SchoolLunch #Superheroes are doing every day… probably in a district near you!

School Breakfast Changes Lives

After a bit of a hiatus that included a broken ankle on the part of my husband, a broken femur on the part of my 91 year old mother, and a new grandchild, I am back.  And I've been thinking about school breakfast.  School Breakfast changes lives.  Studies show that students who eat school breakfast miss less school days throughout the school year, score 17% higher on math tests and are 20% more likely to graduate from high school.  And the benefits extend long into adulthood: high school graduates on average earn  $10,000 more than people who do not graduate from high school, and they are less likely to experience food insecurity.  Clearly, breakfast lives up to its reputation as the most important meal of the day.   And yet, while over 21 million students across the United States qualify for free and reduced price meals... less than half of these students are eating breakfast at school.  The data is the same in my own district, and we spend a lot of time wondering why families are not taking advantage of this benefit, and working on strategies to make breakfast more accessible.  

Several of our schools were recently awarded $1000.00 grants from Share Our Strength's No Kid Hungry Campaign.  The purpose of the grants were to test a variety of innovative breakfast marketing strategies to help determine which are most effective in increasing breakfast participation.  We were excited to receive this boost to our existing breakfast program and were anxious to see if some of Share Our Strength's strategy ideas would help us to further increase our participation.  As participants in the grant program, we were encouraged to offer breakfast free to all students in our elementary schools on a designated day, to study the impact that a universally free breakfast would have on participation levels.  

At this "free 4 all" breakfast event, we chose to have a simple "Super Bowl" Top Your Own Cereal Bar, inspired by a Kellogg's  Cereal & Milk pop up event that I happened upon in Times Square last summer.   

Kellogg's Cereal & Milk Pop Up Store in Times Square..
complete with The Roots in concert.

Student were able to top their cereal bowls with a variety of toppings, including fresh strawberries, blueberries and dried banana chips.  Whole grain muffins, milk & juice selections rounded out the menu.  We planned our event, gained support from building administrators and teachers, and marketed this free event to parents, with the simple message:   Morning Rush got you frazzled?  Leave Breakfast to us!  

The results were phenomenal!  Our breakfast far exceeded our expectations!  Not only did we double our overall  breakfast participation at our elementary schools, we even served 56% more students who qualify for free and reduced price meals....  even though they can eat breakfast for free on any school day!  Making breakfast "free 4 all" made the breakfast a fun occasion and eliminated any stigma that might be associated with eating breakfast at school. Since the "Free 4 All" breakfast, our breakfast participation has remained strong, with count numbers consistently higher.

Now, even before we participated in Share Our Strength's breakfast grant program, we had been working hard to implement strategies at all grade levels to increase breakfast participation.  The results were encouraging.... and counts were up by anywhere from 30% at our elementary schools to 150% at our middle schools to 50% at our our high school.  We believe that school breakfast supports the educational environment in our school system, and it is our mission to make sure that our students are well nourished and ready to learn.  

At a recent networking session, I was asked to share the key strategies that we had implemented to increase our breakfast participation.  Here are 4 Keys to Breakfast Success that we like to use:

1. Make Breakfast Accessible.  

We use multiple delivery methods to ensure that all students have the opportunity to eat breakfast at school.

• Traditional Breakfast in the cafeteria.  Students come to the cafeteria at the beginning of the school day and eat their breakfast in the cafeteria as well.
• Grab & Go Breakfast.  Students get breakfast in the cafeteria or other breakfast access point such as a breakfast cart, or vending machine.  The breakfast is then taken back to the classroom or eaten en route.  
• First Class "Room Service" Breakfast cart.  At our middle schools, a breakfast cart, fully loaded with reimbursable breakfasts, goes from room to room during the first block of the day.  By utilizing this method, our middle school breakfast participation has increase by 150%. 
  
• Extended Hours Breakfast  At our high school, we stay open for breakfast essentially until we switch over into lunch service, so students can access breakfast during a study hall or in-between classes.  

2. Make Breakfast FUN!

In our elementary schools, we host monthly Fun Friday Breakfasts.  A Fun Friday Breakfast is a themed breakfast, with a menu, decorations, etc. built around the theme.  Some of our themes have included Frozen, Angry Birds, March Madness, Winter Wonderland, Beach Party and Halloween.  Sometimes we give our small "prizes" such as stickers or Hawaiian leis, but more often the fun in just celebrating the theme.  Our Fun Friday Breakfasts have led to an increased breakfast participation of 30%.  The fun themes and marketing associated with the event have helped to encourage our youngest students to TRY school breakfast.   Additionally, these FUN events have helped to eliminate the stigma associated with eating school breakfast.  

Scenes from our Frozen Themed Fun Friday Breakfast

3. Make Breakfast Tasty.

Stay current with breakfast food trends and make sure you understand what students like, and how their breakfast preferences can fit within the school nutrition guidelines.  Some of our favorite breakfast items are yogurt/fruit/granola parfaits, smoothies, breakfast sandwiches and whole grain muffins. Taste test recipes and get ideas and opinions from your students.  

4. Market Your Program!

Toot your own horn!!!  This is hard to do but incredibly important.   Make sure you are telling administrators, teachers, parents and students about the importance of eating breakfast.  Make sure to highlight the nutrition, value and convenience of school breakfast.  Share menus, events and highlights through menus, newsletters, emails, Facebook, Twitter, your programs website, etc.  

These strategies are working for us.  We still have a long way to go (there is always room to grow!) ....  but we continue to strategize, innovate, and look for new ways to make sure our students are well nourished and ready to learn.   Maybe by School Breakfast Week in March of 2016,  every student in our schools will start the day with a nutritious breakfast!  

Chefs Move to Schools

As I wing my way across the country to attend the School Nutrition Association’s Leadership conference, I find myself pondering my next blog post.  Stuck in my head is a “part II” Make Lunch, Not War post about the players and problems facing school nutrition professionals as we look forward to Child Nutrition Reauthorization 2015 (CNR15).  That post seems stuck in my head, without an eloquent or succinct way for me to continue that discussion.   It just all feels so negative & political…. And it just doesn’t seem to want to come out of my fingertips to the page.  And so, I will continue to push that pot to the back burner and let it simmer some more, as I focus more on productive, and more relevant posts. 

RSU #14 Culinary Boot Camp Training

Almost two years ago, our district made the strategic decision to hire a chef as part of our school nutrition department’s management team.    At the time, we were knee deep into implementing the nutrition guidelines of the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHFKA).    Our strategy & goals were for our chef to help us manage these new changes by assisting us with recipe & menu development, managing nutrient analysis, educating and supporting staff to develop culinary skills and techniques, increasing local foods in our school cafeterias, and increasing interest and excitement at the school level by regularly cooking in our school kitchens at “not guest” Chef events.

Chef Sam portions school made breadsticks

As I look back at the past 2 years, I firmly believe that this was one of the best decisions Windham Raymond School Nutrition program has ever made.    At a critical time, when so many school nutrition programs have battled public perception and experienced decreasing participation, our program has thrived.  Over the past several years, breakfast and lunch participation has been increasing at all grade levels.  It is a frequent occurrence for parents to email us for recipes or comment that they wish THEY had so many great choices for lunch everyday. 

Why a chef?? 

A recent study by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has shown that "chef enhanced school meals increase healthy food consumption."

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/chef-enhanced-school-meals-increase-healthy-food-consumption/

The article explains that while hosting Guest Chef events at schools can add excitement and lend positive public relations to school nutrition programs, having a chef on staff who tests and develops recipes and trains school nutrition staff results in children learning to like AND enjoy healthy whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. The study showed that hiring a chef who works with district school nutrition personnel improved the quality, flavor and palatability of the food, and not only decreases plate waste, but increases school meal participation.   While our district was not part of this study, it could have been.  The research and outcomes have been mirrored in our district, since hiring Chef Sam as part of our School Nutrition staff.

Cheese filled cannelloni 

Chef Sam’s duties range from developing and taste testing the recipes, training and supporting staff as we increase “from scratch” cooking, adapting existing recipes to meet current USDA guidelines while maintaining palatability, and culinary skill building with staff to increase productivity, efficiency and safety in the kitchen.  In addition, she teaches an afterschool cooking class for students and oversees our weekend backpack food program.   Chef Sam frequently works in the school kitchens, alongside school nutrition staff, making delicious and healthy meals.  A current favorite is cheese filled cannelloni with freshly rolled pasta sheets, accompanied by a school baked whole grain roll, garden fresh salad, and a fruit & veggie bar.   Fresh pasta in schools?  Yes, please! 

Knife skills training @ Cooking Club

Chefs are practically celebrities these days, with so many cooking shows on television and in the media, and school chefs are no exception.  There is incredible excitement when Chef Sam is in the kitchen.  Her delicious & nutritious health centered approach to cooking & eating inspires our menus, inspires our students and inspires us!   Any school district looking to build participation, credibility, excitement and enthusiasm for the school nutrition program should consider adding a chef to their team.  When chefs become part of a school nutrition team, the results are increased school meal enthusiasm, increased participation, decreased plate waste, and most importantly, increased consumption of healthy foods, including fruits, vegetables and whole grains in children.

           

Fresh & Local - Lasagna made with fresh pasta

Tried & True....

We are often asked about "buy in".  How we build trust amongst our customers, how we build customer satisfaction,  how we keep them coming back.  One of the best ways we have found is to involve students in the process.   We test recipes, we gain feedback, we are always trying to change for the better.  

Today, Chef Sam worked on a recipe that we are trying out for the Kitchen Wisdom panel for the School Nutrition Association.  The recipe was for a Roast Beef & Onion Sandwich.  Roast beef, tomato, avocado, and a roasted onion & red pepper "relish".  We opted to put the sandwich on a whole grain tortilla wrap, instead of a roll.  

These sandwiches combined some very popular flavors.  Freshly sliced roast beef, creamy avocado and the delicious onion & red pepper relish.  Needless to say they were a smash hit.  We packaged them together with a piece of fruit and/or some dried fruit trail mix, and a carton of milk for a quick grab & go reimbursable meal.    Our feedback on the recipe:  absolutely a winner, though we really like them better as a wrap vs. served on a roll, but that could be a local preference: our high school students are crazy about wraps.

The real deal here is this:  kids like to be treated like customers.  Not only that, but they like to have some input.  Yes, of course we have to follow guidelines, and we reinforce this to our customers, the students, all the time.    Beginning at the earliest grades, we are cooking with them in the classroom, involving them in school gardens, training them to use a salad bar appropriately.  As students get older, we include them in recipe taste testing.   Recipe naming is also a great idea to gain student acceptance and buy in.  Our district's favorite baked beans are named Chef Sam's Better Bacon Baked Beans, and several years ago, we named a sandwich a Panem Panini, to coincide with the opening of one of the Hunger Games movies.

Engaging and involving your customers is a win/win.  Students who are more involved and feel like "part" of the School Nutrition program will support the program with loyalty.  Participation goes up, students are eating healthy, nutritious meals.  This has been a tried and true formula in our district,  resulting in increased participation over the past 5 years.  It takes work and strategy, but it is well worth it in the end!

Veggie Tales

We interrupt this regularly scheduled blog post to bring you this message about vegetables.  That's right.  Vegetables.  See, vegetables are a big deal in my world.  Making sure our school nutrition menus include the correct amount of vegetables and the correct amount of vegetable "sub-groups" is like a monthly game of sudoku.     

There has been a lot of clamoring lately about the vegetables.  Currently, students are required to take at least 1/2 cup of either fruit and/or vegetables, with every school lunch.   This was a change under the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010.  Previously, students could refuse the fruits & veggies offered with a school meal... they could take them or leave them.  Now, they have to take some, which has resulted in a lot of people saying that it's our trash cans that are on the receiving end of all these 1/2 c. servings of fruits & veggies.   

But what I want to share today is a vegetable story.  A story about some little girls.  and their vegetables. and how they learned to like their vegetables.  

One of the best things that Chef Sam & I get to do it go into a classroom and cook with kids and teach them about healthy eating. A couple of months ago, we were with a class of 3rd graders, making Curried Carrot Soup.  The students were peeling and chopping the carrots, sautéing the carrots & onions in some olive oil, then adding broth, curry & seasoning and eventually blending the soup with an immersion blender.    

When it came time to sample the soup, one student tried a sip, wrinkled her nose, and said she didn't like it.   We told her that was fine, she didn't need to like it, but we were happy that she had helped make it.  All around her, classmates were trying the soup and making decisions.  Did they like it?  Maybe?  Dislike it?    The girl came back and asked if she could try another taste, so we gave her another cup, and she walked away, tasting the soup.  This happened at least 4 times, when she finally came back and reported, "you know, I think this soup is growing on me!  I think I am starting to like it!"    Success!  From dislike to like in less than an hour.  

This was one of the success stories that I shared in Washington DC in February.  Interestingly enough, it was during that trip, that one of my own vegetable dislikes was challenged.  You see, for my entire life, I was a brussel sprout hater.  I can still remember sitting at the dinner table when I was only 7 or 8 years old, absolutely unable to swallow the brussel sprouts.   It was one of those nights when I wasn't going to be allowed to leave the table until I ate those things.  It was a battle of the wills, and a very long night.  I never did swallow those brussels sprouts and I never ate them again.  That is, until my trip to Washington.  

Our first evening in DC, we ate at this excellent restaurant called Zaytinya.  My friend ordered a plate of "crispy roasted brussel sprouts", and I secretly wondered why anyone would eat a whole plate of brussels sprouts.  And then, she offered me some.  I thought of the student and the curried carrot soup, and I thought of myself, sitting at that dinner table, so many years ago.   Remembering the student, I gathered my courage and decided to try them - the presentation was gorgeous, and they smelled delicious.  And guess what?  I loved them!  I became obsessed with them and recently recreated the recipe at home.  THAT is how much I loved these brussel sprouts.   

So here is the moral of the story:  learning to like vegetables takes time.  It might take an hour, it might take decades.  Freshness, preparation method, seasoning, presentation... all of these factors come into play.    Creativity, imagination, and determination.  

Kids in schools are learning to like vegetables!  We serve carrot fries (roasted carrot sticks), Chef Sam's Better Baked Beans, roasted cauliflower, kale & apple salad, butternut squash soup, roasted edamame salad, the list goes on & on.  The key is lots of choices, delicious recipes, lots of time, trained staff.  Allow students fun and friendly opportunities to try new foods, maybe even let them dream up crazy names for them.   

There are discussions swirling around about relaxing the fruit & vegetable requirement with the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act.  I for one, am in favor of keeping the fruits & vegetables on the table.  Because, after all, learning to like new foods takes time.  

Make Lunch.... Not War. Part I

It's been said before: "As Maine goes, so goes the nation"... and this may be true.   Recently  Kevin Concannon, U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, told C-SPAN that school nutrition  programs in Maine are some of the best in the nation.   A recent count shows that 147 schools in Maine, representing 46 school districts, have achieved awards through USDA's Healthier US School Challenge (HUSSC).  HUSSC award winning schools have shown to meet a rigorous set of achievements involving physical activity, nutrition education, and nutrition standards in the school meals program.  Go Team Maine!  

Recently, a group of colleagues and I traveled to Washington to tell our stories - stories from the school nutrition front lines. Stories of success.  Stories about kids, tasting foods for the first time, stories about feeding hungry students and nourishing lives.  Powerful stories about making a difference.  

  Visiting Capitol Hill          photo credit: Herb Perone

While in Washington, we met colleagues from across the country,  colleagues committed to the nutritional integrity of school meals.   We heard stories of success and innovation, stories from California, Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania...  The truth is, there are exciting school nutrition happening all across the United States.  

It seems, however, that recently, we have been distracted by a food fight.  On one side of the lunch war, we have  celebrities such as Jamie Oliver and "mommy bloggers". Social media is bombarded with staged pictures of school meals from "around the world".  It seems as though so called experts are intent on waging war against school nutrition programs, smearing the integrity of the school meals program, like jelly being smeared on a peanut butter sandwich.  

No one has defended the School Nutrition program more eloquently and succinctly than my friend Dayle Hayes, MS, RD, of School Meals that Rock, in her recent blog post response to the so called School Lunch Haters:

http://schoolmealsthatrock.org/2015/04/01/10-ways-school-lunch-haters-can-get-off-their-soapboxes-and-support-realschoolfood/

The truth is, the battle gets tiring.  We want to make lunch, not war.

The battle, the fight, the haters... its discouraging AND distracting.   I would challenge all of the haters, critics and celebrity "experts" to develop a menu within the USDA guidelines, and with in the allotted budget ($3.00 per lunch including food/labor/supplies/equipment).   Make sure  that the menu is whole grain rich, includes 8 oz fat free or low fat milk, healthy servings of protein, and plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.  And then, make sure the kids like and eat it.    It's a challenge. But. We. Are. Doing. It!

In our district, we spent the month of March eating our way through the alphabet, fruits and vegetables, A-Z.  Kids we able to experience everything from Asparagus & Arugula to Kiwi & Quinoa to Zucchini.  

Students tasted, tried and learned.  They were exposed to delicious foods they have never tried before.  This is how we choose to fight the food fight - by making lunch and making it exciting and delicious.  

This is just part of the battle, but it is absolutely the most public part.   The second part is that the need for increased funding for school nutrition programs is critical.  I will save that Make Lunch, Not War post for another day.   

Happy Easter and nutritious eating!