Fed Up

Written by Cindy Morgan

Celebrity Chef Jamie Oliver Has Begun to Reveal the Ugly Truth About School-Provided Lunches, and Some OC Parents are Joining the “Food Revolution.”

So they are having pizza for breakfast and nuggets for lunch?” asked British chef and fresh food crusader Jamie Oliver on his first day in the kitchen at Central City Elementary School in Huntington, West Virginia.

Viewers across the United States who tuned in to Oliver’s six-episode series “Food Revolution” in March and April saw up close what a public school meal looks like in Huntington: Cereal swimming in pink milk for breakfast, popular entrees like highly processed chicken nuggets and pizza loaded with preservatives—and not surprisingly, most of the healthy food provided for kids is either rejected or thrown away without being tasted.   

 “Welcome to America,” was his conclusion.

If you have seen the lunches served in Orange County you know that the meals are strikingly similar to those in West Virginia. In several of the 28 districts, it may even look worse with more processed frozen foods and fewer fresh-cooked items. Oliver would have found nearly exactly the same menu at Santa Ana Unified that he saw in Huntington: A pizza bagel for breakfast followed by popcorn chicken for lunch.

Every week in every elementary school from Anaheim to Yorba Linda, menus feature cholesterol-filled items like nachos, corndogs, pizza, burgers and French fries. Fresh food is almost entirely missing from lunch menus. Gone are the days where lunch ladies prepared hot meals for kids in school cafeterias. Many elementary schools in Orange County don’t have a cafeteria or kitchens with the capability of preparing fresh-cooked meals—the ovens are only used to reheat prepackaged processed food items.

These are the types of foods that are contributing to a frightening increase in childhood obesity rates. The American Academy of Pediatrics most recent findings are that one-third of children between the ages of 2 and 19 is overweight or obese in America.

“The lunches that I have seen at my son’s elementary school are truly gross looking,” says Laguna Niguel mom Valerie Zoretic. “Frankly, when I have turned those trays over and read the nutrition facts I wonder how certain items could ever be considered healthy.”

Terri Benedict, a mother with kids in the Tustin Unified School District agrees.  “My kids do not buy school lunches because they think it’s basically fast food,” she says.

They are both right: Some of the foods Orange County children are served in schools are not especially healthy, and most look an awful lot like fast food. Meals are supposed to follow federal and state guidelines for fat and calories, but not all districts or all meals are in compliance, according to a USDA study a few years ago. Even when pizza is made with a multigrain crust as it is in Capistrano Unified, or the hot dog is on a wheat bun as it is in Brea Olinda Unified, it is still pizza and a hot dog—fast, convenient, processed food.

What Oliver and many parents around the country and in OC would like to see is real food prepared fresh in public schools. Chicken that looks like chicken, not a breaded and cooked patty. Sandwiches that are made on real bread rather than a Smucker’s Uncrustable loaded with sugar and preservatives. In order to achieve this though there will truly need to be a “revolution,” one begun by parents fighting for change at the federal, state, local and family level.

The main reason why school lunches in Huntington, West Virginia, and Huntington Beach, California, look more or less the same is because they are largely funded and supplied the same way. Since 1946 when Congress established the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), the federal government, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture has funded school lunches for low-income children, ensuring that every child in American public school receives at least one nutritionally-balanced meal each day. Today the NSLP provides low-cost or free lunches (and in some schools breakfast as well) to more than 30.5 million children nationwide, 200,000 of those in Orange County.

Schools that participate in the NSLP receive cash reimbursements for meals served to eligible children. The reimbursement for a free meal is $2.68. For a reduced priced, lunch schools receive $2.28 per meal and for a paid lunch $.25. The state of California contributes only $.13 for every free and reduced priced lunch, and it is up to cash-strapped districts to choose how much money they will spend per meal. Most districts in the state are experiencing year after year budget cuts, and are not able to provide any funding for school meals.

A district like Santa Ana Unified, with 83 percent of kids on free or reduced priced lunch, must keep the cost of each meal at or near the reimbursement rate. Districts with fewer kids on free and reduced priced lunches have to rely on the money generated by meals sold: In Irvine Unified, a meal costs $3.25, and with only 6 percent of kids on free and reduced priced lunch, the meals have to pay for themselves. In all districts the price of labor is high and takes a significant amount of money out of the price of each meal.

“The amount we are reimbursed is too low and labor in California is very costly,” says Karen Papilli, who has been the director of food services in Garden Grove for 18 years. “There is very little money left over to pay for food.”

In fact, food services directors have about $1 to spend per meal. It is no wonder that the meals include little fresh food, whole grains or lean meats. These ingredients simply cost too much.

One way schools achieve the low-cost lunches they are forced by low federal reimbursement rates to provide is by purchasing commodities from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Commodities are surplus food items grown on farms across America. They make up about 20 percent of the food served in school meals. Meat and cheese are two of the chief commodities available to schools, an interesting statistic considering that the USDA food pyramid recommends a diet rich in whole grains, legumes, fresh fruits and vegetables. According to a report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health care research organization, only 13 percent of commodities provided are fruits and vegetables, and of that, few are fresh and nearly half are potatoes that are turned into french fries and tater tots.

The NSLP also requires that participating schools meet basic nutrition guidelines: No more than 30 percent of an individual’s calories from school meals can come from fat, and less than 10 percent can come from saturated fat. Meals must also offer one-third of the recommended daily allowances of protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium and calories.

After all these requirements have been met, food service providers in schools have one final challenge: Prepare foods that kids, notoriously picky consumers, will actually eat. Even with an extra dollar per meal from the federal government—which is being called for by “Renegade Lunch Lady” Ann Cooper and the Slow Food movement—it is unclear that a generation who have been raised on chicken nuggets, french fries and microwaveable meals, will want to eat fresh and healthy foods.

 “The kids are eating all the processed food,” observes Oliver in the first episode. “They leave the good stuff behind. They don’t eat the food they are supposed to be eating.”

In Garden Grove elementary schools, Papilli has found the same problem. “The hardest thing to balance is what kids will eat with what is good for them,” she says.

Papilli has worked hard with very tight budget constraints to get produce carts with many locally grown products into all 47 elementary schools in her district. But kids’ favorite menu items are chicken nuggets and tacos. Food service providers are handcuffed by federal regulations and low reimbursement and handicapped by children’s preference for highly processed kid-friendly foods.

Teaching this generation of kids that fresh foods are not only good for them, but good to eat is the very real challenge facing parents and schools today. Food service personnel often resort to smuggling healthier ingredients into kid-friendly foods. Dawn Davey, head of Nutrition Services in Capistrano Unified, the second largest district in Orange County, plans to incorporate brown rice into stir-fry bowls next year, but feels in order to make it palatable to kids, it will have to be mixed with white rice. Kids simply do not have a taste for whole grains like brown rice, and since she doesn’t want them to throw the meal away, she will have to integrate change gradually. It’s not a revolution, but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

“What is this? Does anybody know?” Oliver says holding up a bunch of tomatoes to a class of Central City Elementary first graders.

“A potato?” One 6-year-old volunteers.

Not a single child in the class knew they were tomatoes. But when he asked them what makes the ketchup that they eat with their fries, they all shouted, “Tomatoes.”

As more and more Americans opt for fast food and prepackaged microwaveable meals, children have less and less knowledge about what healthy foods look like and what they taste like without added salt, sugar and preservatives. The meals they see at school every day perpetuate the lack of food knowledge: Mashed potatoes are made out of reconstituted potato starch, milk is pink or brown, fresh produce is often packaged in plastic wrap and something called Teriyaki Beef Dippers served in several Orange County districts look like Scooby Snacks with artificial grill marks added on.

“We need more [nutrition education],” Melissa Mathis, a registered dietician with three kids in Capistrano Unified says. “The exposure to nutrition is definitely minimal but the California curriculum provides no room for it.”

With little space in the California curriculum and diminishing funding for anything that is not geared toward state standards, it is likely that most children in California public schools will learn next to nothing about food and nutrition unless their teacher, principal or food service department makes an effort to provide it for them.

Kimi Kent and Joanne Stoecker, two fourth grade teachers at King Elementary in Cypress, made the extra effort to incorporate food into their social studies unit on the California Gold Rush. Students spent the morning churning butter and making corn muffins just like the Forty-Niners would have done. Their lunch, coordinated by the teachers, parents and Food Service Director Lenette Brown, included the items they prepared as well as chili beans, tortilla chips, beef jerky and apple pie.

“If parents or the PTA comes to me I am happy to help them in any way I can with food,” Brown says.

It may not have been the most nutritionally-rich lunch, but it was a meal in which kids took an active role in preparation and the adults provided support and curriculum to supplement an academic lesson—something you don’t see a lot in schools today with so much pressure on testing and accountability.

One state-wide program that attempts to bridge the gap between nutrition education and state curriculum standards is “The Network For Healthy California.” This federally-funded grant program, in place in many low-income Orange County schools, introduces fresh produce to kids who don’t know that french fries start out as potatoes or what a tomato looks like. The program provides fresh California-grown seasonal fruits and vegetables (called “The Harvest of the Month”) to children and educational materials about the produce that link directly into the state standards in every subject area.

Geoff Iannello, operations manager for the Network for Healthy California in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, says the teachers make the most of the program because it so clearly links nutrition and food education to the California standards at every grade level. But more significantly, “The fruit or vegetable is offered on the lunch menu several times during the month and kids get the chance to taste a healthy food many times.”

But because the program is only available to low-income schools, most kids in Orange County miss out on the opportunity to taste fresh strawberries and kiwis as part of their curriculum. And getting their tiny hands on a piece of fruit may be a harder than it seems.    

What Oliver found is that changing school lunches in America is a Sisyphean task. District staff and personnel often resist change, the levels of federal, state and local bureaucracy are daunting, change is costly and money is scarce.

Near the end of his trial week running the kitchen at Central City Elementary, when he thought he had all but lost the opportunity to significantly change the foods offered in Huntington public schools, he gathered all the parents and kids outside and showed them just how much junk was part of the school lunches served each day.

Parents looked on in horror as gallons of flavored milk loaded with sugar was poured onto a tarp on the playground, buckets of french fries and nachos were emptied out and a dump truck full of fat was deposited on top—this was the amount of fat that was in a year’s worth of school meals. It was a stunt for sure, but he realized that for any change to happen, parents had to be behind it.

“Parents. . .are the nuclear weapon,” says Oliver, “People need to realize that their efforts make a difference.”

Sky-rocketing childhood obesity rates and its related health problems (diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease) are the wake up call to parents and schools—the dump truck of fat on the playground, if you will. No one wants to see their children live a shorter life due to weight-related illnesses or medical conditions.

School districts from New York City to Berkeley, California, are making significant strides toward bringing fresh and healthy foods into their schools. Orange County may be lagging behind, but as more parents take an active role in promoting healthier meals at home and at school, there just might be a revolution.

Changing The Cafeteria

De-mystifying the hot lunch, Renegade Lunchlady Ann Cooper gives kid-friendly lunch entrees in the back of her book “Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children” (2006). These recipes are lunch bag-friendly and are easy for schools to adopt that would provide healthier, fresher meals to children.

Turkey Meatloaf

½ c. onion diced small
¼ c. shredded carrot
1 clove minced garlic
1 T. canol oil
3 lbs. ground turkey
1 t. chopped parsley
½ c. Japanese panko breadcrumbs
3 eggs
1 t. kosher salt
¼ t. ground black pepper
3 t. ketchup

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8” x 4” loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray.
2. In a small skillet saute onion, garlic, and carrot in the canola oil until soft. Cool slightly.
3. Mix the ground turkey, bread crumbs, eggs, salt, pepper, parsley and sauted veggies by hand.
4. Pack the mixture into the greased loaf pan. Coat with the ketchup and bake approximately 45 to 60 minutes. Use a meat thermometer to test for doneness: 140 degrees in the center.
Nutrition information: 1 slice 169 calories; 9 grams fat (49 percent of calories); 2 grams saturated fat; 113 milligrams cholesterol; 4 grams carbohydrates; 17 grams protein.

Good-For-You PB&J

Using two slices whole wheat bread, all-natural peanut butter and blackberry jam the nutrition facts are:
400 calories; 16 grams fat (approximately 25 percent of the recommended daily allowance); 1.5 grams saturated fat; 12 grams protein; 60 grams carbohydrate.

Note: The fat in peanut butter is the type recommended by the USDA.

Sugar, Fat and Sodium—Oh My!

The USDA recommends that children and teens from 4 to 18 years of age, get between 25 to 35 percent of calories from fat, with most fats coming from sources of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids such as fish, nuts and vegetable oils. Fat intakes that exceed 35 percent of calories are associated with both total increased saturated fat and calorie intakes.

Below are examples of a typical lunch week at Saddleback Valley Unified School District. All meals include two items from the produce bar (one fruit and one vegetable) and a choice of milk (low-fat white or non-fat chocolate).

Monday: Chicken nuggets 270 calories; total fat 16 grams (53 percent of calories from fat); 4 grams saturated fat; 50 milligrams cholesterol; 15 grams protein; 15 grams carbohydrate.

Wednesday: Chicken and cheese quesadilla 375 calories; total fat 18.5 grams (44.4 percent of calories from fat); 11 grams saturated fat; 45 milligrams cholesterol; 16.5 grams protein; 36 grams carbohydrate.

What the nutrition facts don’t tell you: The majority of school lunch entrees are made up of highly processed foods and full of additives. It isn’t clear what a meal includes, or what has been added to the chicken nuggets.

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