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Tray Trends: This Year’s New Cafeteria Items
The beginning of the school year is a convenient time for cafeterias to tweak their menus and introduce new foods. So it’s also the time when the food industry showcases all the new items it has cooked up for school lunchrooms. Last month, I attended the School Nutrition Association’s annual conference and food expo, where hundreds of companies showed off their cafeteria-ready food items. In the lobby just outside the main expo, the association had assembled a display of new products. Here are some of the items that might arrive in the cafeteria this year:
- Anything syrup-infused is big. The display showcased bags of Pillsbury syrup-infused Mini Pancakes, as well as Smuckers Snack’n Waffles (”ready to eat, already sweet”). Both are ready to serve right out of their “ovenable” branded packages.
- You might see minis on the lunch menu this year, thanks to popularization from chains like Burger King, Jack in the Box and Johnny Rockets. Pierre has come out with packaged, heat-and-serve mini cheeseburgers, as well as mini Link-n-Dogs. Pierre’s brochures call the meals “minis to maximize participation.” “Kids are bombarded with minis messaging everywhere they go these days,” one vendor said, assuring a cafeteria director beside me that they would sell well.
- Variations on pizza, quesadillas and other cheese-smothered items also had good representation in the display. ConAgra’s MAX brand now offers chili cheese wraps and pizza quesadillas (”a blend of cheeses and salsa in a pizza shape”). And if that’s not enough cheese, there’s the MAX Twisted Stix, which the company describes as “cheesy focaccia seasoned breadsticks.”
- Looks like sugary cereals have gone mini too. The display boasted boxes of Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats Little Bites in chocolate flavor, which, according to the package, are “clinically proven to improve children’s attentiveness by almost 11 %” and result in “up to 23% better performance on a memory test.” (Of course, that’s compared to when kids ate no breakfast at all…)
- The showcase included a nice assortment of so-called “healthy” snack foods. The Snack Factory was offering bags of pretzel crisps in flavors like buffalo wing and chipotle cheddar and honey mustard onion. Tio Pepe has come out with grab n’ go stuffed churros, superpretzels and soft pretzels.
- There’s been a debate raging over flavored milk in schools recently, with some saying chocolate milk has too much sugar, and others saying the sweet treat is fine since it gets children to drink their daily dose of calcium. Time to expand the debate beyond chocolate. Numu Beyond Milk now makes milk in flavors like monsta chocolate, ragin rootbeer, mocha mania, extreme hot fudge and chilin mint chocolate.
Plenty of schools are starting off the year with more fresh fruits and vegetables, and even produce from local farms. I just hope those fresh carrots can stand up to the Stuffed Churros, the Snack’n Waffles and the Pizza Quesadillas.
August 28th, 2009 at 6:51 am
None of this stuff is food! It seems to me that the SNA partners with and promotes packaged processed crap that does nothing to promote health. More of business as usual.
My advice to parents who can afford to: feed your kids REAL food at home and brown bag it whenever possible.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:45 am
I agree that the vendors only continue to promote foods that are not necessarily the best foods available. However I think that it is our place (all school foodservice entities) should rise to the occasion and make better food for our students. We have made a real effort to make more housemade foods from scratch.