My middle school kids are blaming "Obama" for their new unappetizing lunch menus, and this is new nationwide change...
seattletimes.com
Required vegetables now on Seattle Schools' lunch curriculum
As part of the first changes to school-lunch rules in 15 years, schools in Seattle and across the nation now must ensure that students put a half-cup of fruit or vegetables on their trays. Students don't have to eat the food, but the hope is that they will.
Students at Seattle's Greenwood Elementary, hungry for lunch, grabbed yellow trays, made a quick pass through the salad bar, then headed for the counter where Judi Wergeland-Rammage was handing out hamburgers, burritos and bagels with cream cheese.
A school lunchroom manager at Greenwood for 14 years, Wergeland-Rammage has always encouraged students to try the growing number of fruits and vegetables that Seattle cafeterias offer each day. She even sometimes wears a kiwi costume to promote that fruit.
But this year, Wergeland-Rammage must play food enforcer, as well as encourager, making sure students put at least a half a cup of those foods on their trays.
On Thursday, that meant sending one student after another back to the salad bar before they could pick a main course.
To the girl with a lone slice of red bell pepper, she said: "I need you to get more veggies."
To another with a smattering of salad: "Add an apple to that."
Wergeland-Rammage and cafeteria workers across the nation can't just make fruits and vegetables available anymore. As part of the first changes in school-lunch rules in more than 15 years, the federal government this fall began requiring schools to make sure that each student takes the minimum half-cup serving.
At Greenwood Elementary Thursday, the options were apples, peas, raw broccoli, red peppers, kidney beans, carrots and green salad.
Students don't have to actually eat the required food — a fact that has raised concerns that a lot of it may end up in the garbage. As one Florida school nutrition official told Education Week, a newsweekly: "We don't want healthy trash cans."
But the hope is that students will eat what's in front of them.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture instituted other new rules for this school year as well: More whole grains. Less salt. More offerings of legumes. And, for the first time, maximum calorie counts for protein, grains and full meals — another tactic in the battle against childhood obesity.
So far, the regulations cover only school lunches, but new rules are coming for school breakfasts, too, and foods offered in vending machines.
Seattle cafeteria staff will be monitoring what gets thrown out so they can offer what kids will eat, said Wendy Weyer, the district's nutrition services director. Staffers already promote fruits and vegetables, she said, and plan to do more of that.
Overall, Weyer said she supports the changes, but she, too, is worried about how much food will be thrown out. She also worries about the new maximum calorie counts for high-school students. Those maximums are the same for a short 15-year-old freshman and a tall 18-year-old senior, she said, and might prompt some kids to turn to fast foods.
High-school students can purchase additional food in the cafeteria if they're still hungry, but Weyer said there are limits to what they can get for the price of one meal. The dinner rolls that used to sit at the end of many high-school salad bars? Those are now rationed from behind the counter, she said.
Kade Pham, a Greenwood fifth-grader, joked on his way to lunch that if President Obama was the one forcing kids to eat more vegetables, then Obama had just lost his vote.
Pham said later that his real concern was how many students were throwing fruits and vegetables away in these first few days of school.
As the second lunch period ended, some Greenwood students, observed throwing out broccoli or peas, protested that they had eaten some of their vegetables.
But Pham said he thought many just pitched all of them.
If the government is requiring kids to take the food, he said, then it also should make sure they eat it. |
