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| Smaller rural schools are often the best match for fresh, local and organic farmers to supply season produce that can be processed and frozen for year-around interest, as is done in Viroqua, Wicsonsin. |
Changing what America’s students eat, school by school
By Greg Bowman
Viroqua’s fifth season pioneers local, organic offerings
Frozen ratatouille is the key. It’s the menu maker that allows Marilyn Volden’s kitchen crew at Viroqua, Wisconsin’s, K-12 school system to capture the goodness of local produce, harvested in August at the peak of its seasonal goodness. Because some of the farmers involved in a 40-producer collective are organic, so is some of the food—at no extra charge.
For two years, Volden has supervised a late-summer training day when her staff cleans then runs 1,000 pounds of summer squash, garlic, onions, tomatoes, sweet peppers and eggplant through a commercial food processor. They roast the vegetables then freeze them for use in calzone, stromboli and pizza.
“Kids love it,” Volden said, and have from the first introduction as a pizza topping. “We use it on items that look like what they are used to, including pasta sauce and soups.”
The 1,200-student system has a single working kitchen, making it ideal for working with local farmers willing to meet the needs of the school: fresh food at reasonable cost with a tight delivery schedule.
“The first mistake many people make is that kids won’t like better food made with local ingredients,” Volden said. She noted her staff successfully introduced organic carrot and zucchini muffins, made with local applesauce, at a “back to school night” with kids and parents.
The fresh-and-local purchase initiative, done via a bid list that goes to area farmers, has been “nothing but positive. The community support is awesome, but now they expect it. They’re taxpayers, and we’re purchasing from farmers who spend their money right here,” Volden reported.
An AmeriCorps volunteer at the school coordinated a Healthy Harvest Challenge in late 2009 for area students, who had to use locally grown food in a nutritionally approved menu that their peers would eat—for less than $1 per plate. About 200 people showed up for the event. The exercise had student teams working with a mentor chef for many months of study and research. It gave them new appreciation for the challenge their school cooks face.
The idea came from Monique Hooker, a professional chef and representative of the state’s Farm to School program who had judged a similar program in Chicago called Cooking Up Change.
~G.B. |
Nobody is against serving better food in schools, certainly not when First Ladies and English celebrity chefs are making the case so convincingly. But actually displacing bland, over-processed food-like entrees and with healthy menu items that are more often fresh, local or organic is another thing altogether.
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| Stories, gardening, menu exploration and ingredient sampling as some of the ways that school food staff members are providing repeat positive experiences with healthier foods, including asparagus, shown here. |
The key is targeting precise quality specifications when schools ask companies to compete for their dependable business during the school year. That’s what happened when the public school district in St. Paul, Minnesota, decided to find milk with less sugar and to buy more fresh produce from the region’s farmers.
Until school cafeteria directors have the support they need to demand better food with greater transparency about where and how it’s produced, and food-service companies find markets for less fat-fewer ingredients-whole grain products, not many students will benefit.
Bringing sustained creativity and determination to this task at some of the largest school systems in the country is School Food FOCUS (transforming Food Options for Children in Urban Schools). The project, launched in late 2008, supports a network of school food service professionals from 29 districts who are engaged in systems change, dozens of their community partners, and other advocates for local, healthy, sustainable school meals.
Starting with vegetables
School Food FOCUS began their work in St. Paul in late 2008, using a “learning lab” approach which has now been extended to Denver and Chicago. The process engages school officials who make a district’s food decisions, a sustainably oriented local non-profit with food-policy expertise, land-grant agricultural economists and procurement evaluators to monitor the process.
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Using local produce in foods that look lie students are expecting, like this vegetarian pizza with its topping made with all-local roasted vegetables.(Viroqua sidebar)
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The St. Paul group set priorities to improve nutritional quality, source from local farms, and to increase the amount of food that is sustainably produced. When the primary milk supplier said it couldn’t cut sugar, the group found a supplier that said it could, and new products came available, according to Dorothy Brayley, who spearheads the learning lab work for School Food FOCUS.
Next the group began meeting with farmers before writing its bid request for produce, asking apple, fruit and vegetable growers what they needed to make selling to schools practical and profitable. The outcome was that distributors who bid agreed to prep (wash and chop) some items, name the farmers who sourced the food, and list the lowest price farmers received for their goods. Now, food service officials occasionally check in with farmer-suppliers to monitor how the system is working for them.
Creative leadership and a central commissary where staff can do modified scratch cooking for the whole system (think lasagna and daily yeast breads) have been keys to success in St. Paul, according to JoAnne Berkenkamp. She’s been working with the schools on food issues since 2005, now as the program director for local foods at the Institute on Agriculture Trade Policy (IATP). The group is the district’s School Food FOCUS community partner, as works as well with its Farm to School (local sourcing) and its school garden efforts.
Berkenkamp reports with satisfaction:
- St. Paul Schools purchased 110,000 pounds of food locally in the opening six weeks of classes.
- About 40 percent of the produce during that time was local
- In the 15 months prior to January 2010, the number of Minnesota schools buying some amount of food locally doubled.
Chicken is tougher
The St. Paul team learned, however, that they couldn’t exert enough market force to get chicken products that were more sustainably produced in whole-muscle cuts (not in the typical highly processed leftover fragments that pressed into chunked protein product). For that they need other large districts demanding similar specifications with unusual transparency about price, sourcing and production standards. This is where the FOCUS network of 29 large districts serving more than 4 million children can become a force for change.
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| No, this is not school food that students will see, but it does meet nutritional and cost requirments of a public school cafeteria—and uses ingredients from local farmers in Wisconsin. (Viroqua sidebar) |
Key to expanding school food improvements as rapidly as possible is networking between districts, assuring that breakthroughs in one district can inform strategy, research and negotiations for improved food elsewhere.
There is great resistance within the system to change, due to an unfortunate combination of perpetual underfunding that limits choice, the relative cheapness of highly processed versus fresh food, the dwindling food preparation capacity of most school kitchens and, especially, the school lunch program becoming a ready outlet for surplus USDA commodities.
The best-available sustainable chicken and whole-grain bread products were featured at a recent school food conference in Chicago. Representatives from 26 large city schools, food vendors and processors, nutritionists and healthy food advocates got to taste the products and review how well the met researched criteria.
Nitty-gritty details
Chicken goals were set high to test what was food service companies could provide. Criteria included:
1) bird sourcing -- not treated with antibiotics or antimicrobial drugs, fed vegetarian feed free of arsenic additives, from farms with good waste management practices and fair treatment of fairly paid workers;
2) food product -- will contain no artificial colors of flavors, MSG, chemical preservatives or additives, no partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, high fructose corn syrup (HFSC) with low sodium (lesss than 300 mg per serving), 30 percent or less calories from fat and 10 percent or less calories from saturated fat.
Broccoli is different than a battleship
At a recent event, a USDA official told a school food crowd that he had to use the same regulations for bidding school food commodities as the Pentagon uses to buy a battleship.
Advocates took note, and resolved to have their policy warriors press for a new regulatory category of “perishable food” where common-sense quality standards can factored in to every purchase. |
Bread product goals included: very high percentage or 100 percent whole grain, “clean label” (no artificial or chemical additive, free of GMO-derived ingredients, no HFSC, locally grown ingredients and sodium less than 25 grams per 0.9 oz. serving.
No food-service company supplied product that ranked well enough to enter the Chicago event’s food showcase. Smaller distributors with selected products talked about why the cost of their entries, which were much higher than schools could afford.
Farmers wishing to help school food directors increase local, healthy purchases need to focus on specific improvements at a competitive cost. Consistent demand throughout the school year is an attraction to local negotiations for smaller rural schools. These are much closer to farms, and their lower volume makes it easier to match what local farmers, individually or through a co-op, can provide. (See sidebar: Viroqua’s fifth season)
Innovators in schools, business and the advocacy community committed to healthier food for students will use the lively public discussion on school food to push for what they can accomplish—where they are with the dollars they have--one plate at a time.
Greg Bowman is communications manager at the Rodale Institute.
"The movement to make school food better, Part 2: Food directors seek leverage points to find better, fresher food." The hard work of innovative school food directors and their allies is creating openings in a system that resists change, creating windows of opportunity for farmers willing to work equally hard to create ways they can put their food on school plates.
"The movement to make school food better, Part 3: School food gives rural areas new hope." How food changes in Denver schools are impacting some of Colorado’s commodity farmers.
Resources
National organizations and campaigns
Organic. It’s worth it in schools. Organic Trade Association effort to empower parents, teachers, students, educators and others to request their schools offer organic food.
Farm to School Extensive coordinated national network of school projects with state coordinators
Jaime’s Oliver’s Food Revolution School Food page of campaigns
Jamie Oliver video: His provocative talk on receiving the 2010 TED Prize of $100,000 to pursue his wish: “To teach every child about food.”
One Tray works on policy to link local and regional farmers to school food improvement
Child Nutrition Initiative focusing specifically on the 2010 Child Nutrition Act
School Food FOCUS (transforming Food Options for Children in Urban Schools)
National campaign, funded by W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Healthier US Schools Challenge (HUSSC), USDA Food and Nutrition Service. Emphasizes improved nutrition and physical activity.
This federal initiative emphasize menus including fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products; that include lean meats, poultry, fish, beans, eggs, and nuts; and that are low in saturated fats, trans fats, cholesterol, salt (sodium), and added sugars.
USDA Food Atlas showing food environments via an interactive map
Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative improves lifestyle choices of children’s nutrition and exercise
Food service innovators
Bon Appetite Management Company is a pioneer in farm/food sustainability and nutrition standards
Chartwells has incorporated sourcing and sustainability criteria in its three divisions serving different student sectors
Parkhurst Dining Services brings sustainability commitments and regional sourcing to schools, institutions, corporate clients
Taher Inc. workis with clients in 10 states to improve healthfulness of school food
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