What’s for lunch?
Ursula Spencer, a cafeteria worker at Trinity High School, prepares for lunch by cutting fruits and vegetables for students.
Ursula Spencer, a cafeteria worker at Trinity High School, cuts and fills bags of healthy fruits and vegetables for students.
Trinity High School student Julia Chakos, center, talks about how much healthy food is wasted by students during lunch. A hands-on study found that fruits and vegetables were frequently thrown in the trash.
Students who are members of the Trinity High School wellness committee got their hands dirty to find out just what foods students aren’t eating for lunch.
Apples and unopened milk containers are among the healthy items that Trinity High School students are throwing in the trash instead of eating at lunch.
Gone are the days of hamburgers, tater tots and canned peaches. Today’s school lunch menus include chick pea salad, whole-grain pizza dough and fresh watermelon.
But the changes to school nutrition programs phased in since 2012 have met with mixed results: Meals are healthier, but students may not be eating them. The federal Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act mandates lean proteins, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes and fat-free milk. Students may see bits of carrots in their chicken and gravy over whole-grain biscuits, or smaller slices of pizza.
Trinity Area School District food service director Nicolle Bazant Pleil believes school nutrition is improving. “The national school lunch program is healthier than it’s ever been,” she said. “Now we look at vegetables, sodium, iron content, whole grains. I feel better as a mom and a nutritionist.”
You can offer students a healthier lunch, but will they eat it?
Trinity High School food service worker Ursula Spencer spends hours every week preparing healthy choices. “We do lots of fresh fruit,” she said proudly. “It’s awesome that we’re able to get it … watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes, strawberries. I’ll do fresh salads, chick pea salads and broccoli salads, and a lot of time goes into making it.”
It’s disappointing to learn that much of her hard work gets tossed into the trash. “They’re required to take it, but they don’t always eat it. So a lot of the fresh fruit just gets pitched,” she noted. “We spend a lot of time making it and cutting it up every day, and for it to go in the garbage … If they didn’t have to take it, it wouldn’t go to waste.”
The sad truth is there is plenty of waste. Trinity High School’s wellness committee recently conducted a project to find out just what students are eating. The committee is composed of students, staff and administrators, and all of them rolled up their sleeves, put on rubber gloves and dove into the garbage can to analyze what kids were eating. The results shocked even the students:
• 584 pounds of trash from four lunch periods;
• 133 pounds of uneaten fruits and vegetables;
• 41 pounds of uneaten food;
• 128 pounds of unopened milk and juice.
Senior Sam Trapuzanno helped sort through the garbage and found 43 percent of fresh fruit cups went uneaten. He calls the system counterproductive.
“It’s kind of annoying that you have to get something you don’t really want and if you don’t get it then your lunch is more expensive,” Trapuzanno said. “That’s why some people take it and then just throw it away.”
Freshman Julie Chakos said, “At the register, they’ll tell you if you take the fruit it’ll make your meal cheaper. So a lot of times people will take the fruit but not eat it or maybe put it in our share basket.” The “share basket” collected unopened milk, juice, fruit and other items that students didn’t want so that others could enjoy them.
Senior Michael Bury thought it was a terrific idea. “All of the fruit you didn’t want you put in the share basket and if someone was hungry and didn’t want to buy fruit, they could go in the share basket and take one out,” he explained.
The idea worked well but is currently being revamped to meet health department regulations on sanitation and refrigeration. Yet even when the share basket did exist, some students still threw unopened containers of milk, fruit juice and fresh fruit into the trash.
Rules dictating what constitutes a “meal” are often confusing and single items can be expensive. “I take my lunch and I like to have strawberries. It costs more to have strawberries than to have a whole lunch,” said senior Taylor West. “If you just get a sandwich and not a fruit or vegetable with it, it costs more.”
Administrators say their hands are tied because districts receive higher reimbursement for whole meals than for single items.
Central Greene School District Superintendent Brian Uplinger keeps an eye on his students’ eating habits, too.
“More students are eating fresh fruits and vegetables than they did in the past. We try and make the daily selection items they like while still following guidelines.” For instance, applesauce is often on the menu for elementary students. Uplinger said the major change was adding more whole grain products.
“We were already offering students fresh fruits and vegetables daily,” he said. “At the high school level, students are offered a fruit and vegetable bar. Our hope is that students leave the cafeteria with a full stomach and if they take all five components offered, they should. Most parents are unaware that their child only has to take three of the five items offered for lunch to make it a reimbursable meal.”
With the change in regulations, one of those three must be a fruit or vegetable. Uplinger measures the program’s success by the number of students the district feeds daily. “Even with a small amount that we are down in enrollment, more students are eating. That tells me we are doing something right.”
Ursula Spencer said, as a parent, she applauds the renewed focus on nutrition. “I have kids here so I would love for them to be presented with a good, wholesome meal,” she added. “But on the flip side, they’re required to take so many fruits and vegetables and some kids just don’t want what’s required.”
Wellness committee student members want to bring back the share basket and make videos to explain meal choices to the younger kids. Pleil is optimistic about focus on nutrition and thinks the healthy menus are starting to work.
“I think they’re listening for the first time,” she said. “It is a good start. We want them to eat well, we really do. And they’re starting to get it. Compared to three years ago, I think they’re doing better.”
Watch the wellness committee’s YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDlXoEN8Tms