Inside School Food

If you’re old enough, you remember the days when “cafeteria ladies” had a craft and the food at school was hand made, right down to the dinner rolls. After decades of moving away from that proud tradition, districts are slowly returning to it. In Maryland, a stand-out “boot camp” for food service workers statewide teaches basic cookery, nutrition science, professional kitchen protocols, and much more. It’s a model for training programs that are emerging all over the nation as schools work their way forward (and back) to more real, fresh food in the cafeteria. This program was brought to you by White Oak Pastures.

“The folks that attend our training are trained on how to train and then there’s a ripple effect.” [05:30]

–Stewart Eidel on Inside School Food

“We’re trying to be catalysts for the local economy and jump-start it through economic development. which is just a sidebar to all this [school food initiative]” [35:00]

–Jeffrey Proulx on Inside School Food

“Anybody can heat anything up regardless of technique – but to actually have to chop vegetables or whatever the recipe calls for – gives me more pride.” [36:00]

–Becky Anderson on Inside School Food

School gardens are now being embraced nationwide, as is farm-to-school. But school garden-to-cafeteria? It’s what’s coming next–well-established in some districts, in fact, which offer valuable resources to beginners. Concerned about food safety? Funding? Whether or not to buy student-grown or accept it as a donation? Is it worth the trouble–does it interest children in eating more produce, trying new fruits and veggies? The nation’s two leading experts, from Colorado and Oregon, discuss all this and more. This program was brought to you by White Oak Pastures.

“Everyone along the supply chain of school food should get their fair equal prices. There are costs to school gardens. Right now districts don’t pay for much of those costs.” [18:00]

—Andy Nowak on Inside School Food

“What we develop in Denver needs to be a template – the beginning of a conversation in your own county.” [25:00]

“If you put in the effort and there are educational opportunities in place – you see wholeheartedly that kids will make nutritional choices.” [28:00]

–Rick Sherman on Inside School Food

HAVE IT YOUR WAY through partnerships with nimble small and mid-size processors. Want your own wild-rice meatloaf? A baked falafel made with local beans? Tyson and Schwan’s can’t help, but there are newcomers to K-12 food service who can. In this episode of Inside School Food, we’ll meet two of them and learn how to get healthy, clean-label foods developed or adapted to your specifications through direct processor-SFA collaboration. This program was brought to you by Whole Foods Market.

“There are many progressive districts coming to us asking to get as far away from white rice as they can.” [10:00]

“I can make your commodity diced chicken taste good in a one pot dish” [15:00]

–Coleen Donnelly on Inside School Food

School food has been commanding headlines for well over a month, as controversy rages over costs and complications associated with implementation of stricter new nutrition standards. If you’re confused over who’s on what side of this debate, and what it’s really all about, you’re not alone. It’s gotten so political. Today we’re stepping away from all of that to simply look at what the standards are designed to do for kids, and whether or not they’ve been able to do it. We’ll discuss three studies that suggest students–at-risk students especially–are eating more fruits and vegetables and even losing weight. This program was brought to you by Bonnie Plants.

“We need to consider factors outside of school. Let’s say you make all these positive changes in a school but a fast food establishment is across the street from a school – does that affect the impact or counteract positive changes made in the schools?” [24:00]

—
Daniel Taber on Inside School Food

Salad bars aren’t rocket science, but getting them right calls for careful, common-sense assembly with the right ingredients. If you’ve listened to Salad Bars Part 1 (and we suggest that you do), maybe you’re wondering if you can get salad bars to work in your district–or work better. Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools can help. Need equipment donation? Technical assistance? A community of practice? You’ve come to the right place. This program was brought to you by Bonnie Plants.

“78% of the districts that we surveyed reported increased purchases of fruits and vegetables after implementing a salad bar. The goal here is to provide more access to fruits and vegetables to kids.” [07:00]

–Mara Fleishman on Inside School Food

“With good education and signage – you do not have excess waste at salad bars.” [20:00]

–Ann Cooper on Inside School Food

Composting and recycling at school isn’t just about eco-friendly waste diversion. It also provides students with a powerful lesson in sound environmental practice that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives. The message is simple: what comes from the earth can be returned to enrich it, so it can provide for us again and again. How to get started? Today’s guests, from San Francisco, CA and Northampton, MA, will tell you how: Start small. Champion your early adopters. Develop educational and marketing tools to enlist the support of the entire school community. Or use materials from other districts–there’s lots out there already! Thanks to today’s sponsor, Cain Vineyard & Winery.

“A big part of San Francisco’s ‘Zero Waste’ initiative hopes to be achieved through education… we have a 63% landfill diversion rate in San Francisco schools.” [6:00]

“We prefer starting with the kids and hope the adults catch on… We understand the power that kids have.” [14:20]

— Tamar Hurwitz on Inside School Food

“We did underestimate how difficult it would be to get all of the students to sort their food waste properly; it was difficult to get everyone on board.” [27:30]

— Anna Moore on Inside School Food

Are you a salad bar skeptic? If you are, you’re not alone. Many a committed K-12 food service director is hesitant to try, out of concern over participation, waste, expense, mess, and food safety. And now salad bars in schools are seemingly even trickier to pull off. How do you insure that kids are meeting their daily fruit and vegetable quotas–and the required weekly balance of green and orange veggies, and beans and peas–if you let them serve themselves? For answers, we will first turn to school salad bar evangelist Rodney Taylor, from Riverside Unified, and two of his talented staff. This program was sponsored by Tabard Inn

“Every kid goes through the salad bar first. At that point they are engaged by an adult on each side who encourage children to eat the colors. We want the plate to be colorful.” [09:00]

Rodney Taylor on Inside School Food

“I have served over 6 million salad bar meals in Riverside. For those who tell you it places children at risk – I’ll tell you I haven’t lost one child yet.” [15:00]

“There’s a level of service we want to be able to provide. Once they [the children] see that you care – it will immediately turn [things] around.” [31:00]

— Ryan Douglas on Inside School Food

In Jefferson County, Colorado, a better school lunch often starts with better chicken: locally and sustainably grown, without antibiotics, and prepared from scratch. In the world of K-12 food service, this is widely regarded as an Olympian swan dive off a 33-foot-high board–beautiful to behold, but not something you can or should try at home. Today’s guests on Inside School Food explain how they do it (turns out it’s not that hard, if you’ve got ovens and the right supplier), and how their effort impacts student health. This program was sponsored by Tabard Inn.

“It’s easy for us to sell whole birds, it’s easy for us to sell chicken breast – but when we’re parting the birds out, we often end up with dark meat as a byproduct. We usually just end up selling that as a commodity product into the marketplace and we’re not able to get a premium price for it even though it’s a premium product. We’re able to sell it into the school districts and supply them with a premium product because of how we raise those birds. That allows them to sell a meal at a very price conscious point – then we know those kids are able to eat a quality meat, schools are able to meet their budget and we even end up with some marketing out of that.” [24:00]

–Chad Anderson on Inside School Food

This week’s episode of Inside School Food is the first installment of a series of episodes we’re calling “And Now for Something Completely Different,” in which we profile programs and business models that upend common assumptions about what’s possible in school food. In the schools served by not-for-profit DC Central Kitchen, children formerly accustomed to pizza and breaded chicken fingers eagerly chow down on house-made fresh food that routinely includes beets, cauliflower, and collards. The skilled staff who prepare it are people who have emerged from stressful life circumstances with the help of DCCK culinary job training. For DCCK, good school food is not an end in itself, but a cornerstone to a larger, community agenda. This program was sponsored by Edwards VA Ham

Today on Inside School Food. we’re talking kitchen equipment—What do we have? What do we need? And how can we go on doing without under new meal-pattern requirements that call for more—and more perishable—produce, that staff need to safely store, prepare, portion, and serve? Jessica Donze Black of the Pew Safe and Healthful Kids’ Food Project and Jon Dickl of Knox County, TN Public Schools discuss widespread infrastructure deficits in school districts coast to coast, and what steps you can take to fund capital improvements while making the most of what you’ve already got. This program was sponsored by Fairway Market.

“A lot of what we found schools needed were not expensive things – for example utility carts! …. Then of course expensive things like Combi Ovens – which for some schools is the difference between using or not using the deep fryer.” [08:00]

–Jessica Donze Black on Inside School Food

The face of free school food is about to change in some neighborhoods thanks to something called Community Eligibility. Community Eligibility helps bring universal meal service to high poverty districts. It’s been introduced in phases, and this coming school year it’s going national. This week on Inside School Food, Laura Stanley is chatting with two experts who can help listeners understand the specifics of Community Eligibility — Madeleine Levin, senior policy analyst in the Child Nutrition Unit at the Food Research and Action Center, working on school nutrition issues, and Leslie Fowler, director of nutritional support services, at Chicago Public Schools. This program was sponsored by Whole Foods Market.

“More kids eat when community eligibility is implemented.” [08:00]

–Madeleine Levin on Inside School Food

“There’s no obligation to participate. The greater need is around the students that need the program and that’s what we’re focusing on.” [21:00]

–Leslie Fowler on Inside School Food

Go inside school food on Inside School Food, a brand new show on Heritage Radio Network! Paying for the new school lunch on just six extra cents (yes, you heard that right) per meal: Gitta Grether-Sweeney, Director of Nutrition Services at Portland, OR Public Schools and Bertrand Weber, Director of Culinary and Nutrition Services for Minneapolis Public Schools, wrestle with one of the thorniest issues in school food today: How can districts afford the abundant produce now required under the new meal pattern? Our guests, both known as ace problem-solvers, share their strategies for reducing waste and meeting the bottom line, while admitting that, even for them, the challenges remain huge.