School Lunches Then & Now Nutrition Plays A Greater Role In Today’s Lunches, But Fastfood Still Reigns Supreme

It’s feeding time at Moran Prairie Elementary School, and the chicken patties are selling like hot cakes.

At least, better than the burritos.

“They taste like chicken nuggets,” Nicholas Stejer says between bites of his patty. Adds Matthew Richardson: “The burrito has really bad cheese.”

Actually, the nacho cheese sauce doesn’t seem that awful when I sample it later.

But what do I know? I haven’t had hot lunch in a school cafeteria for more than 20 years, back in the days when they slopped something on your tray and your only options were eating it or dumping it.

At Moran Prairie, not only can kids choose between chicken patties and burritos (with cheese sauce, salsa or plain), on this day, sixth-graders get to round out their meal with a trip through the salad bar.

That’s something of an exception. Only six elementaries offer entree choices in the Spokane School District, and Moran Prairie is the only one with a salad bar - so far.

But selections multiply at middle and high schools, with their “food court” concept. “It’s like going into a restaurant, really,” says Gloria Thomas, cafeteria manager at Glover Middle School.

There are at least 12 entree choices a day in middle schools, 16 in high schools. Sure, three of the offerings are pizzas with different toppings. But you don’t hear many complaints, particularly with pepperoni on the menu every day.

“That’s the most popular,” says Rick Skinner, who took over as food service director for Spokane schools seven years ago, when choices were rare.

“We need to give our customers as many options as possible,” Skinner says. “They have that available outside the school setting.”

Long the target of jokes and jeers, school lunch programs today are caught in a crunch between their customers and Congress - their two main sources of income.

The House has passed legislation to turn the lunch program over to the states, with federal funds increasing more slowly in future years compared to the current system. The bill awaits Senate action.

Meanwhile, students’ changing tastes in a fast-food world have sent schools scrambling to provide attractive menu items that still meet nutritional standards.

“Virtually the only time we serve gravy anymore is on Thanksgiving and Christmas,” says Linda Turner, food service director for the Coeur d’Alene School District.

Skinner says there are three things you won’t see on Spokane school menus: macaroni and cheese, meat loaf and beef with gravy. Kids simply won’t eat them.

“Our counts will drop by 2,000 to 3,000 a day if we serve those,” he says.

While three out of four elementary school students in Spokane eat hot lunch, that drops to six out of 10 in middle school and only one out of three in high schools, where open campuses and cars increase the competition.

More than half of the 16,000 Spokane students who eat school lunches get them for free or at the reduced price of 40 cents, based on family income. The rest pay $1 in elementaries, $1.25 in middle schools and $1.50 in high schools.

“At this school, there’s more competition from parents packing good lunches,” says Moran Prairie Principal Marilyn Highberg.

“You take a look at what they’re packing in their lunchboxes and it’s pretty healthy food. We could get some of them to eat hot lunch, if they were willing to take the risk.”

It’s a far cry from the days when Jane Hayter went to school in Spokane.

“There was no stigma about eating hot lunch like there is today,” she says. “I loved hot lunch. I still can remember the beef and gravy.

Now 60, Hayter has spent the past 24 years on the other side of the serving line, currently as cafeteria manager at Westview Elementary.

“We used to make wonderful macaroni and cheese, meat loaf, Swedish meatballs,” she says wistfully. “We used to fry chicken. Today, they don’t know what baked potatoes are.”

Adds Helen Murphy Acosta, a 28-year veteran who manages the cafeteria at Chase Middle School: “We fix homemade soup every day, and I can count on one hand the kids at Chase who will eat soup.”

About 60 percent of the entrees the district serves are purchased at least partially pre-prepared. Exceptions include such dishes as spaghetti sauce, lasagne, pizza and calzones; most breads also are baked fresh.

Prepared entrees not only help control labor costs, they offer the kind of consistency kids are accustomed to at their favorite fastfood outlets.

“If anything, it came from McDonald’s,” Skinner says. “You can go to McDonald’s, have a hamburger and know exactly how it’s going to be.”

For longtime cooks like Hayter and Acosta, it’s an adjustment.

“I don’t like to see so much prepared food, processed food,” Hayter says. “I don’t know if that’s as good for our bodies.”

Still, she admits: “Hot lunch would have died if not for him (Skinner). He’s given the kids what they want.”

Even though the lunches may look like typical fast food, Skinner stresses that there are differences. Prepared school foods are specially manufactured to meet federal guidelines for protein and other nutrients.

Explains Skinner: “A kid might say, ‘I can go get a corn dog over at the convenience store, and that’s OK.’ But theirs are likely to be beef and pork, where ours are all poultry. And our corn dogs are fried in canola oil, while theirs may be fried in other oils.”

Low-fat cheeses were introduced in the district this year. Two years ago, the reduced-fat white milk selection switched from 2 percent to 1 percent (which kids call “blue milk” because of both the color on the carton and its tint in a glass), while chocolate milk went from 2 percent to nonfat.

Federal regulations still require schools to offer higher-fat whole milk - the more fashionable “red milk” - which leaves Skinner shaking his head.

Desserts tend to be fruits and juices, or maybe ice milk. “If a week looks pretty good (nutritionally), we’ll have a brownie one day, although that doesn’t happen very often,” Skinner says.

Even the tater rounds (“tots” is a trademark) include added vitamin C. Ground turkey shows up in place of beef or pork in some dishes, such as meatballs, where spices can cover up the blander taste.

“In meatball subs, I can still sell them that way,” says Glover’s Thomas. “Spaghetti, I don’t even try anymore. It’s a waste of time.”

A nonfat turkey frank is on the way, although the lighter-colored dog could raise a few eyebrows among students. Not to mention cooks.

“You have to be careful not to boil them, or they turn green,” Hayter says of the poultry franks. “You can get them up to 140 degrees, but not much more than that.”

As for the turkey meatballs, Acosta adds: “At more than 150 degrees, they turn pink.”

And kitchen staffs still haven’t warmed to the new, fat-free gravy. “It just stands up and looks at you,” Hayter says.

Skinner realizes the selling job involved. New menu items are routinely tested with student groups to see if they will fly. “We can decide we like it, but our taste buds are different from kids’,” he says.

“You can make something fatfree, but why go to the trouble of buying, preparing and serving it if it’s just going to be thrown away?”

Still, schools need to cut fat wherever they can. Federal regulations scheduled to start taking effect next year will require lunch programs to average no more than 30 percent of calories from fat, the recommended level for the overall population.

“It’s very difficult to give kids the amount of calories they need and still meet that level of fat,” Skinner says. “Difficult, but not impossible.”

A recent survey showed schools nationwide averaged 38 percent. Spokane is at 32 percent.

Coeur d’Alene already meets the new requirements, Turner says. The district is one of 41 recognized nationwide by Voice for Public Health, an advocacy group, for its efforts to reduce fat, sugar and salt.

One of the four regular menu choices in Coeur d’Alene elementaries is a vegetable tray served with ranch dressing, a protein source of some kind, bread and fruit.

Turner is looking for a lower-fat alternative to hot dogs, another daily staple.

“It’s not so much that we’ve changed the kind of food we serve, but the products we serve,” she says. For example, she found tater rounds and french fries with three or four grams of fat per serving, instead of the typical 15 to 20.

“They’re out there,” she says. “You just have to look for them.”

Working with The Heart Institute of Spokane, the Mead and Central Valley school districts occasionally offer “Lite ‘n Hearty” meals that fall within the fat guidelines.

While a cheeseburger may still be on the menu, it’s accompanied by oven-baked french fries, fresh carrot sticks and a frozen fruit-juice bar, says Catherine Abbott, Mead’s food service director. Some students even choose skim milk when it’s available.

“Just like at home, we’re reading labels and trying to increase our vegetables and fruits,” Abbott says.

But if the plan to turn lunch programs over to the states succeeds, the new nutritional rules will be wiped out, too - which food service directors say could be as big a blow as any funding cuts.

“You’ll have 50 different standards, and they may not be based on sound nutritional advice, but on how much money they have in each state,” Skinner says.

Adds Abbott: “Are we still going to be responsible to the public for nutrition, or are we going to be cut back so much that we’ll just be slinging hash?”