Shiny

I’m pretty critical of school food. This is natural considering I like vegetables and I hate weird processed foods AND to top it all off, I find Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution perfectly swoon-worthy. When my foodservice class started this fall, I was disappointed and frustrated to hear how most of the kids in public schools in our country are fed. I couldn’t believe how my professor (who is also a dietitian who oversees school food) could know what she knows about nutrition and still serve kids what they’re served in our city. But I have no idea what actually goes into planning and producing a school lunch. So after spending time with her at two of her schools earlier this week, I think I have a much better–much more level–view of what goes on in a school cafeteria.

Here are some things I learned:

• Most school cafeterias function as independent entities separate from the rest of the school meaning they don’t get tax money and aren’t a part of the school’s budget as a whole. They hire and pay their own employees, buy their own food and equipment and some even pay their own utilities. They produce their own revenue (which is minimal) and rely on the government’s National School Lunch Program to subsidize the rest.
• National School Lunch standards for a healthy meal are created by the USDA. Each school must meet these USDA requirements to be reimbursed by the government for the money spent on the food. According to the USDA, a healthy meal includes: 1 serving of meat, 1 serving of bread/grain, 2 servings of fruit/vegetable and 1 serving of milk. Some states have additional guidelines beyond this base. Here in South Carolina, 4 fruit/vegetable options are required.
• The National School Lunch program provides $2.72 per meal, but after spending a sizable chunk of that on labor, employee benefits, equipment, etc., only $1.08 is left for food. Of this $1.08 that the school district dietitian and kitchen managers have to work with, $0.26 of it must be spent on milk.
• Schools can distribute food in an offer vs. serve method meaning all of the required foods to meet the USDA’s lunch pattern are laid out on the line, but students can choose to only take a minimum of three. The other option is to put all the required food on one tray and give it to every single child. The problem with this is that much of it is thrown in the trash. An example of a child taking a minimum 3 items on an offer vs. serve line would be… a hamburger. Beef patty = 1 meat, Bun = 1 bread, Pickles = 1 vegetable. I’m not kidding. Pizza would also work. Crust = 1 bread, Sauce = 1 vegetable, Sausage = 1 meat. Juice counts as a fruit as do fruit desserts like a cobbler.
• It may not be true everywhere, but in my city the school cafeterias have nothing to do with what is served in vending machines. This is a separate initiative managed by school administrators who bank some $80,000 a year to allocate to programs at will. Anecdotal accounts tell me that the allocation of these funds is not always ethical. I don’t know if that’s true.
• School cafeteria workers only work 180 days of the year when school is in session. The rest of the time, they have to find another job or save ahead of time to get through the summer. Due to holidays and school in-service days, these employees rarely receive a full 40-hour work week because they are only paid when school is in session. It’s hard to find people who can live like this, and as a result, employee turnover is high.
• School food has been hit hard by the media and is under much scrutiny. The people I spoke with said they felt attacked but that their hands were tied. To advertise that food is healthy is to guarantee that children won’t eat it. But not advertising this information makes it look like steps in the right direction are not being taken. For example, the schools I visited quietly replaced their pizza crusts with a whole wheat base, cheese is all low-fat or fat-free and milk is all skim. They don’t say anything though because they want the kids to continue eating it.
• Schools receive government subsidies in the form of truckloads of chicken, milk and other commodities. In an effort to maintain the market price of a food item like milk (to keep it from skyrocketing and messing up the economy), the government will buy it up en masse and deliver it to schools. Some schools appreciate these deliveries, others are burdened by them. A lack of storage space as well as a lack of manpower for processing things like whole chickens makes the food difficult to work with. Many schools will redirect their government subsidies to a large processing plant–like Tyson for chicken or Land O Lakes for cheese– and pay to have the “raw” materials processed into chicken patties, sliced cheeses, etc. Because chicken is chicken is chicken to Tyson, if they know 3 trucks of school subsidized chickens are expected for processing but haven’t arrived, they’ll begin processing their own product and deliver that instead. This means that much of what is served in a school cafeteria is the exact same thing you’d buy in the grocery or at Chic Fil A. The only difference is that schools can only charge $2 for it because people get all up in arms when school food gets too expensive.
• In the event of a global natural disaster, school food subsidies will be redirected to the affected area. When Katrina hit, the schools in my city were expecting several truckloads of government foods that were instead sent to the victims of the hurricane. They then have to scramble to find enough money to buy the foods that will meet the USDA’s requirements so they’re receive their reimbursements. It makes sense that the government should help the victims, but it throws off the school’s plan.

This is long, but this isn’t even the half of it so I’ll let you digest that for now. I can tell you that knowing what I know after just one day in a school, I am much less likely to criticize school food workers. In my opinion, the problem with school food lies not at the school level but at the government level. From what I can tell, school food workers are busting their butts to meet federal guidelines, but the problem is that the guidelines themselves are flawed. Pickles cannot count as a vegetable. Tomato sauce on a pizza can’t either. The USDA needs to redefine what their expectations are, and I have no doubt that schools will meet them.

Fuel

My Fall “break” is coming up this Friday and Monday and I would like to actually have a break for the first time in a year. I work straight through every single night, weekend and vacation. Woe is me, I know. Take pity on my soul. It’s not that big of a deal because I made the choice to complete my degree as quickly as possible so I’m the one who never stops going for the next two years… and I will also be an RD sooner than later. Still, it gets to be a bit exhausting.

So I made the call this afternoon to drag Stew up to Amelie’s for a later-nighter so I can finish as much as humanly possible tonight so that I can do as little as humanly possible this weekend.

He’s in charge of keeping me in line (and clearly is missing the fact that I’m blogging right now and NOT writing out diabetic, 2g sodium, mechanical soft and vitamin K-controlled diets… suckaaa).

No funny business.

Too bad you can't see what I'm doing over here

Uhhhhh

BAM... a blog.