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Don’t Blame Food Service: A View from Inside the Kitchen
By Nancy Borowski —
As a School Food service Manager and Certified Dietary Manager, I can tell you what we see from the other side of the serving line.
I am concerned that many kids today are unfortunately being fed quick-service, pre-prepared, grab-and-go or fast-food meals on a continual basis. With the hectic lives we lead these days, as well as both parents working, it’s no wonder people often turn to these products, without sometimes realizing what’s in them or the health issues they may cause later in life.
However, in the system that I am employed with, I can say that we prepare as many entrees from scratch as possible. We run a repeating three-week cycle menu. This helps to control inventory levels and also gives students a wide variety of foods to choose from. We offer three entrees each day, with the third entree being a Chef Salad that is available to students every day. Of the 45 entrees listed on our cycle menu, only 11 (24%) are convenience items. The remaining 34 entrees (76%) are made from scratch in-house.
Over the last three years there have been major changes to the regulations placed on School Food service. There were approximately 65-70 new regulations that we had to implement and comply with per the State/Federal Government to qualify to receive reimbursements. Meals must now be made following standardized recipes, which must list all nutritional content. Menus are analyzed to meet requirements on fat content, sugar content and calorie content for a week’s time frame.
I do believe that there are systems that do a great job at offering more traditional or “home cooked” items. I also know there are systems that rely on nothing but convenience items. As a whole however, I feel like we have been labeled as the ‘bad guys”. When you serve oven baked chicken and students ask if its Kentucky Fried, or make tacos from scratch and they ask if it’s from Taco Bell, it makes you wonder what they eat outside of school.
When they blame us school food service for making today’s children obese, here’s what I like to ask them. On average all people eat three times a day. That makes 21 meals per week, or 1092 meals per year. Students are in school on average 180 days a year, and schools only serve two meals a day.
If a student attends all 180 days and eats both breakfast and lunch at school, he consumes 360 meals from the school cafeteria. This amounts to only 33% of the meals he consumes in a year. The other 67% is consumed at home or with family.
Why are we being blamed when students can only consume a maximum of one-third of their meals at school?
February 21st, 2009 at 11:02 pm
If students eat a third of their meals at school, I would say that’s an incredible opportunity to lock in the most healthy and nutritious, colorful meal possible. I don’t buy the idea that you need to offer Pizza Hut or Taco Bell to get kids to eat the food at school. School should be vending machine free. Get rid of kids selling chocolate bars as fund raisers, too. Let’s spend the money to meals prepared by chefs. The Naked Chef is doing it in England. Today’s kids are soft, fat, and malnourished. We are failing our children. Let’s change that. Let’s be a nation of fit, healthy people. Let’s educate America. Let’s eat good food.
February 26th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I agree with Michael, I think we owe it to our kids to help them make good choices about nutrition. If the fast food is not avaliable they will be more willing to give sometjhing new a try. Last year i did a fun day called “fear factor fruit” it wqas suggested to me by sales rep. The kids were able to sample different fruit. I did cantalope, pineapple, mango, papaya, and kiwi( i used frozen). Them they had to identify the fruit. It was a big hit. Now pineapple and kiwi are on my menu at lest 5 times a month, and the kids love it. If you make food fun and appealing you ocan convert kids to helthy eating without a big fuss.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
School is where our children learn (we hope) good behavior and habits. It does not make sense that emphasis is placed only on academic and none on what goes into their bodies?I am not defending the parents either but rather we all need to work together to give our children a consistent message from day one that having whole grains, vegetables, lean meat and fruit is a proper meal… not french fries, burger or pizza and soda.