{"id":4920,"date":"2016-01-25T09:02:18","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T17:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/school-district-tries-building-meals-kids-will-buy-and-eat\/"},"modified":"2016-01-25T09:02:18","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T17:02:18","slug":"school-district-tries-building-meals-kids-will-buy-and-eat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/school-district-tries-building-meals-kids-will-buy-and-eat\/","title":{"rendered":"School district tries building meals kids will buy – and eat"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014<\/strong> The Anchorage School District\u2019s dietitian is fed up with kids who hate their school lunches, so much they walk straight from the food line to the garbage.<\/p>\n

So dietitian Laura Phillips and the head of student nutrition, Jim Anderson, have started to overhaul the school menu for the first time in years. They\u2019re having students taste-test new dishes, from all-beef hot dogs to chunks of sweet potatoes.<\/p>\n

How the Anchorage School District is stacking up to its long-term goals<\/p>\n

The plan is get more students purchasing lunch and actually eating the food they buy, Anderson said. But staff must walk a precarious line between what students want to eat and what their parents want them to eat, even as they wrestle with constraints like a tight budget and federal nutrition rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cKids want hot dogs. Parents don\u2019t. Some parents really don\u2019t,\u201d Phillips said.<\/p>\n

Currently, about 40 percent of the school district\u2019s more than 48,000 students buy lunch \u2014 others pack food and older students can leave school to eat. Anderson said he wants half the students buying lunch \u2014 and eating it \u2014 by next school year.<\/p>\n

Phillips and Anderson, who both started at student nutrition at the beginning of this school year, said they plan to reach that outcome by listening to their customers \u2014 the students. Since the end of August, the department has continued to survey students on what menu items they like, what they don\u2019t like and what else they want to eat.<\/p>\n

So far, the school district\u2019s whole-grain muffins have gotten the boot. They were so hard that students used them as hockey pucks, Phillips said. Students will also no longer have to suffer through sweet potato Tater Tots that turned to mush when reheated or the salmon burger that they reported as smelling gross, Phillips said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost kids have eaten salmon where they can identify it\u2019s salmon, but when it\u2019s put into a burger, it\u2019s not identifiable. I think that\u2019s kind of why it lost its popularity,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Students told student nutrition staff members that they want to eat hot dogs, chicken wings, french fries and scalloped potatoes.<\/p>\n

\n

Mixed results<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Wednesday in January at the school district\u2019s central kitchen facility off Huffman Road, an employee in a beard net used a box cutter to slice open plastic bags filled with frozen, precut sweet potato cubes that had a maple glaze.<\/p>\n

Two women in plastic gloves scooped handfuls of the potatoes into small plastic trays that moved on a conveyer belt. In the other half of the tray, employees put five chicken nuggets. A machine at the end of the belt wrapped the trays in plastic.<\/p>\n

The trays would then get parceled out to elementary schools, reheated and served for Thursday\u2019s meal. Students would try the new sweet potatoes for the second time this month. Under U.S. Department of Agriculture rules, students must have at least three-quarters of a cup of a red-orange vegetable once a week.<\/p>\n

The USDA has a long list of other rules that schools across the country must follow to get federal reimbursement for the meals they serve. The stricter standards started rolling out in 2012 and required more fruits, vegetables and whole grains in lunches. They also put limits on sodium, fat, sugar and calories.<\/p>\n

Diane Pratt-Heavner, director of media relations of the national Student Nutrition Association, said the number of students buying lunch across the country has dropped by more than 1 million since the new standards took effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cStudent acceptance has been a challenge as menus have had to change,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Pratt-Heavner said the Student Nutrition Association, a collection of school nutrition professionals, is advocating for increased federal funding so schools can afford to supply the more expensive food, like fruits and vegetables.<\/p>\n

School meal programs are not supposed be a net cost to the school district, paid for partly by revenue from lunch sales and partly by federal government reimbursement, she said.<\/p>\n

Anderson said that Anchorage\u2019s student nutrition department hopes to break even this year. But to get federal reimbursement, it must sell the meals it prepares.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, a line of students formed in Huffman Elementary School\u2019s cafeteria in south Anchorage. More filled tables with the lunches they packed.<\/p>\n

Gavin Swegle, an 8-year-old in second grade, bought his lunch. He picked the plastic-covered tray of chicken nuggets and potatoes over the spaghetti and broccoli. He also got a carton of chocolate milk and a plastic-covered tray with applesauce and a multi-grain piece of cake, sweetened with oranges.<\/p>\n

Student Nutrition charges elementary students $3.55 for lunch, or 40 cents if they qualify for reduced-price meals. More than 30 percent of students across the district qualify for cheaper meals, Anderson said.<\/p>\n

By the end of Gavin\u2019s 20-minute lunch period Thursday, he had only tried a few potatoes, which had blackened edges. \u201cI\u2019d like to eat the potatoes if they weren\u2019t burnt,\u201d he said, adding that when his parents serve him sweet potatoes at home, he usually tries to feed them to his yellow Lab, Chelsea.<\/p>\n

At the same table, 8-year-old Evelyn Wiegers said, \u201cI only like regular potatoes.\u201d Another girl pulled back the plastic covering the potatoes and announced, \u201cThis is so gross.\u201d<\/p>\n

Student nutrition chef Karen Richardson attended Huffman Elementary\u2019s lunch to talk to students about what they wanted to eat. She wore a pink chef coat and carried a clipboard. At a later lunch period, she sat next to 11-year-old Carson Myren, a sixth-grader.<\/p>\n

Carson told her that he used to like the school meals a lot more when he was in kindergarten and first grade. Back then, he really liked the French toast. Where did it go? he asked.<\/p>\n

Richardson took notes and told him that they had to get rid of the French toast, partially because of stricter USDA regulations<\/p>\n

Carson said he liked the current salad bar and would like to see more fresh food, like sandwiches or even a cereal bar.<\/p>\n

\n

A new menu<\/strong><\/p>\n

Phillips said the school district doesn\u2019t have the staff to cook all of the food at the central kitchen. It currently makes some food there \u2014 like pasta sauces, chili and dinner rolls \u2014 but a lot of other food comes in frozen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t make money here,\u201d Phillips said. \u201cWe have to be really creative about how we use our labor.\u201d<\/p>\n

But student nutrition has committed to making at least one new homemade product this school year, which it has started marketing as the \u201cbreakfast treat.\u201d Staff got the recipe from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District. The treat, which looks like a cookie, has ground fruit in it, sunflower seeds and dried cranberries, Phillips said.<\/p>\n

Phillips said student nutrition has started testing it in schools, and gotten positive feedback so far. \u201cIt\u2019s really darn good,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Anchorage School District Superintendent Ed Graff said that, for him, it\u2019s most important that students have access to healthy and quality food at schools. When Anderson was hired, Graff asked him to find ways to make the school\u2019s food both healthier and more appetizing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to make sure students were eating more of the school lunches,\u201d Graff said. \u201cSo they don\u2019t have to worry about being hungry when they should be focusing on their learning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Phillips said that when she started working, around the same time as Anderson, she got a lot of complaints about the food.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe complaints were so overwhelming about our schools\u2019 food that there\u2019s no way you could take a paycheck home and not do something about it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s an integrity issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Phillips said that staff recently started testing french fry and buffalo wing products. Everything is baked, not fried, she said, and meets the federal guidelines.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want the parents to know we\u2019re being healthy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The district rolled out all-beef hot dogs on whole-grain buns in December, the first time the item has been on the menu in years. It sold out at schools, Phillips said. Some parents, however, were outraged that the hot dogs contained nitrates, a common preservative in processed meats.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of saying, \u2018OK, well then we can never serve hot dogs again,\u2019 now we\u2019re looking for hot dogs that are nitrate-free,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n

Diane Peck, public health nutritionist for the state health department, said students get between 40 and 50 percent of their daily calories at school, \u201cso it\u2019s imperative that they have healthy choices.\u201d She said it\u2019s OK to have hot dogs and chicken nuggets \u201cvery occasionally,\u201d but that she had not looked at the specific menu items offered by the Anchorage School District.<\/p>\n

Other items that the Anchorage district plans to serve to students this school year include ham and scalloped potatoes as well as Asian-inspired chicken dishes and fried rice for Chinese New Year. In May, it will serve burritos and tacos for Cinco de Mayo, Phillips said.<\/p>\n

The staff hopes to serve an ethnic-inspired dish each month and eventually a new menu item every week, Anderson said. After this summer, they\u2019ll have the equipment to chop and package fruits and vegetables like apples, oranges and broccoli, he said.<\/p>\n

Anderson said how students review items in the next few months will inform next school year\u2019s menu. The staff eventually hopes to have two different menus that rotate between quarters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll have a menu that\u2019s a living, breathing menu,\u201d Anderson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 The Anchorage School District\u2019s dietitian is fed up with kids who hate their school lunches, so much they walk straight from the food line to the garbage. So dietitian Laura Phillips and the head of student nutrition, Jim Anderson, have started to overhaul the school menu for the first time in years. They\u2019re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":4921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4920"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}