It’s a good thing to see first graders clamoring for a lunch of lean turkey burgers, whole potato wedge Texas fries, carrots, celery and grapes. No audible complaints about the newly absent chocolate milk.
Friday’s offering in the Aspen Elementary School’s sunny cafeteria was not the school lunch most who grew up in the ’80s or ’90s would recognize: No dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets; cooks in the cafeteria who actually cook; and where’s the ranch dressing?
A back-to-whole-foods movement has swept school cafeterias, starting in the Garfield RE-2 School District in Garfield County and now Aspen in the public school realm, but also led by area private schools. The mission aims to eradicate the processed foods laden with preservatives and high fructose corn syrup so common in an institutional setting.
Today happens to mark the start of National School Lunch Week, a White House-sponsored recognition of the nation’s vast National School Lunch Program, which serves tens of millions of children each day.
But a 2006 study by the Aspen-based Children’s Health Foundation of the nutritional environment in 20 rural Colorado schools was a wake-up call: The survey found French fries and bean burritos used to fill NSLP vegetable requirements; hot pockets for meat; and frozen juice bars and strawberry-flavored milk passing for fruit and dairy — all in cafeterias surrounded by vending machines offering the worst in junk food.
“Unfortunately, the ideals outlined (in the NSLP) are not the reality in the cafeteria,” according to a press release from the Children’s Health Foundation, which offers financial and organizational support to local schools seeking to improve the quality of their cafeterias.
Did it first downvalley
Sue Beecraft has managed Garfield RE-2 School District food service for 19 years. Shortly after she started, factors such as shrinking budgets and staff led to a turn towards more mass-produced, cheaper food that was easier to prepare, often requiring only the opening of a box, a bag or a can.
But starting a few years ago, the district began rethinking the program. With statistics showing nationwide childhood obesity at 30 percent and growing, “we started to make some changes,” Beecraft said.
The district, located in west Garfield County, began offering a salad bar every day and took steps to cut out unnecessary processed sugars and fats.
“Over the past two years, we’ve recognized that a home-cooked meal went over really well with the kids,” she said.
While kids commonly ask where the chocolate milk is, “once we explain the amount of sugar in chocolate milk, it’s a non issue,” Beecraft said.
Staffing and budgetary challenges persist, however, Beecraft said. She explained that while the 3,000 lunches served daily through the district’s schools still cost about $3 each to the students — the same as before the nutrition initiatives were implemented — the district will likely have to raise the price next year, due to the additional cost of hiring the additional staff needed to prepare food from scratch, as well as increases in wholesale prices.
“All we are trying to do is break even,” she said.
This fall marked the beginning of a new lunch regime in the kitchens of Aspen middle and elementary schools. Until this year, the schools contracted out to a catering service for their food (the high school still does).
Katy Leonaitis, the new chef on campus, said that before her arrival, there weren’t even spatulas in the kitchen, since everything was prepared off site.
Using better ingredients and cooking on site is a big-ticket item for the school district, Leonaitis said, noting the eight new staff positions the program requires. But so far it seems worth it, with students and staff alike confessing that they have been eating more from the cafeteria.
“Everything is being ticked up a notch,” said Leonaitis, who volunteered with the Slow Food organization in the local schools before starting her job full time. Leonaitis’s other efforts include establishing a garden on campus, where the kale and squash grown will occasionally supplement the meals.
Economies of scale
It’s not just about the kids. Dave Avalos, who cooks at Aspen Country Day School, sees large institutions like schools and hospitals as the driving force that can strengthen the local agricultural economy. Through the Culinary Caregivers Collaborative, which he heads with partner Pam Davis, Avalos looks to pool resources and buy quality ingredients in bulk.
Perhaps the most positive societal result of all this would be to take a struggling local farm, offer it guaranteed large buys from local schools, and see that farm reinvest the profits in more productivity, such as greenhouses to facilitate year-round growing.
The example of Big B’s juice demonstrates that it is already happening: The Paonia-based organic apple juice and apple cider maker is now much more prevalent in the Aspen market, spurred by contracts with local schools. Big B’s even started producing smaller containers to serve the kids.
Or there is the example of parents who join the schools in putting in a large order for hormone free, free-range turkeys, and serve the healthy and discounted bird for Thanksgiving, Avalos said.
“It will affect the entire community one way or another,” he noted. “It will trickle in. Everyone will have the ability to take advantage of what we’re doing here.”
curtis@aspendailynews.com
