The movement to make school food better, Part 2

Photos by Sally Ryan, courtesy of School Food FOCUS

Schools seek leverage points to fresher food

One million pounds of Michigan apples, 400,000 Chicago students and a passion to prepare healthier, fresher, more local foods yielded something entirely new: breakfast parfait, made with layers of low-fat yogurt, an apple-blueberry mix and corn flakes.

Finding ways to “menu” more local fresh produce is the happy challenge of innovative school food directors across the country. Those in the biggest districts find the sheer volume of the food they need cuts two ways: it’s harder right now to find enough regional product until food systems re-organize to deliver healthier fare closer to home, but—when they join forces— the same volume gives these key districts enough purchasing clout to win incremental change from national suppliers.

What small rural districts or even a single big-city system can’t do on their own, a multi-state collaboration of mega-systems with the same bid specifications can. Through careful research they are zeroing in on the nutrition and sourcing factors that will have the biggest impact on their students. These energized captains of the cafeteria are learning how to share information with one another to make the most of every step in buying fresher food products, identifying farmer benefit or squeezing in more food quality per dollar spent.

“We’re in this together,” said Dorothy Brayley of School Food FOCUS who shares her years of food-industry expertise with school food directors. “We keep working with them through the process, living in their world to facilitate their work as best we can.

She sets up Learning Lab teams in select cities (St. Paul, Denver and Chicago, so far) within the 29 districts who have joined the FOCUS campaign, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Intensive collaboration between school personnel, community partners, food researchers and outside specialists forms a potent force to develop system-specific goals in the areas of nutritional quality: (less sugar and sodium, more whole grains), local purchase for fresh eating or processing, and sustainable production practices covering environmental and social considerations.

Michigan fruit in Chicago

Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality is a firm that procures and manages food preparation for 481 Chicago Public Schools. The capacity to do “scratch cooking” on premises varyies from none to fairly substantial, with menus varying accordingly. The breakfast parfait entry into the system’s free breakfast program arose with last summer’s fruit procurement from Michigan, according to Chartwells marketing director Jean Saunders.

Chartwells purchased the apples last fall from less than 250 miles away. The producers faced a depressed market for tons of fresh apples, already certified for food safety and graded, and were contemplating sacrificing them to the low-profit juice market. A higher school bid redeemed their season. They were especially happy to find a home for the 138-count smaller apples that fit nicely into a child’s hand but are discounted in the fresh market. Looking to 2010, growers selling these smaller fruits can cut their labor cost for “thinning” (reducing the number of apples to get bigger fruits) to obtain a perfectly salable crop.

Saunders’ best local food moment? Saunders said it was seeing a wide-eyed student encounter his first whole, fresh peach, trucked in the day before from Michigan. “Wow. I thought peaches were mushy and came in a can,” she heard him say. About 72,000 cases of late-season plums and peaches found their way onto trays, and created new connection for the students with real fruit and how it really grows, Saunders said.

A Chicago student tries a fresh peach, purchased 
regionally from Michigan growers.

She’s hopeful that the Midwest’s unused produce processing/ freezing facilities—the most concentrated of anywhere in the U.S.—can be retrofitted to wash, slice and flash-freeze regional produce for schools closest to them. Initial efforts to do this last year resulted in a regionally produced, high-quality product at a competitive price. Peas, green beans, carrots and sweet corn were being served twice a week as a result, with mixed vegetables including asparagus added this year. A new guide helps farmers carefully explore meeting school demand.

Celebrating, analyzing and communicating these successes at any one school is key to enable more schools to make more deals and meals with healthier, more local food. School Food FOCUS had only modest success with an electronic interactive Knowledge Café for information sharing between the 29 participating schools. “School food professionals often don’t have access via their school computers to social networking sites, requiring them to log-on from home,” said FOCUS’ Brayley.

Re-tooling the networking piece in recent months, FOCUS launched a newsletter that goes to 500 people. It published web documents distilling Learning Lab insights on: bidding fresher and more local produce and healthier dairy products; analyzing school lunch costs; and interviewing food vendors to learn their flexibility, connection with area farmers, and willingness to develop healthier products. FOCUS has scheduled a webinar on explaining the ponderous school food supply chain to parents, administrators, media or school staff.

“We’re aggressive about sharing our story through School Food FOCUS,” said Saunders of the Chicago schools’ breakthroughs. “We’ve hosted tours and made presentations to the FOCUS communities. It’s a great platform.”

Greg Bowman is the communications manager for Rodale Institute. When he was in elementary school in eastern Ohio, a neighboring farmer was the also milk man who delivered half-pints of regular and chocolate from regional farms bottled by a regional bottling company.

Series Links

Part 1: Changing what America’s students eat, school by school looks at gains in St. Paul public schools supported by School Food FOCUS, and at the creativity of the rural Viroqua, Wisconsin, school in putting local and organic food on the menu.

Part 3: School food gives rural areas new hope. How food changes in Denver schools are impacting some of Colorado’s commodity farmers.

Resources

See the lists of campaigns and supporting groups at the end of Part 1.

To improve student health and create farmer-school connections around nutrition and ecological innovation Demand Organic.