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File photo by Jim Boyle Students used to fries cooked in oil have lamented healthier versions now being baked in ovens, without salt, under the confines of the Healthy Kids Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 that has been fully implemented as of this year.
by Paul Rignell
Contributing Writer
Lunch may not count as a subject in school, but it has been a hot topic among students in District 728 this fall. The discussion reached the Elk River Area School Board at a work session Monday night, Oct. 20.
Students and staff last month saw a full introduction of the federal Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which became law in 2010.
Public school menus in this district and others in the nation had expanded in recent years to include more fresh fruits and vegetables. However, starting this year the menu options have changed in other ways to boost the nutritional value of some long-time favorites. For example, the baking of all breads, rolls and cookies now involves 100 percent whole grains, said Julee Miller, general manager of food services.
Among other menu changes, nothing could be done to rework and retain certain popular entrees such as buffalo popcorn chicken, Miller added while reporting to the board.
She said that she enjoyed that item as much as anyone.
“I miss it,” she said. “It was very good.”
The menu rotations still include all of the common staples. The school kitchens are ordering and using as many potato products as ever, Miller said, whether the spuds are sliced length-wise like shoestrings or diced and compressed as tator tots.
But it’s hard to qualify those shoestring potatoes as “fries” when they are being baked in ovens, without salt, instead of cooking in oil.
The students are eating the new versions, but some of the loudest reviews have not been favorable.
School Board Member Dan Hunt said he has polled district teens in his neighborhood, and they have told him “the fries are terrible.”
Miller admitted that she is still developing her own taste for the new styles of potatoes. “I don’t think they (the fries) taste very good unless you use a lot of ketchup,” she said.
By the nature of required changes, a la carte lunch options at the middle schools and high schools have shrunk significantly. The cookies are still there for individual sale, but they are different when based on whole grains.
Most of those schools’ returning students have been unimpressed by the sweets, Miller said. However, the students who are now in sixth grade and thus new to middle school are simply thrilled to have the freedom of buying cookies at lunch.
“The sixth-graders think these cookies are ‘the bomb,’ because they have never had anything else,” Miller said.
Negative rumblings about the menu changes have been loudest in the Rogers schools, and the School Board was discussing the subject Oct. 20 with the possibility of allowing those schools to enter different regulations for food service.
“(They) would still need to function under rules,” Miller said.
In the end, the board decided for now, anyhow, that they will direct all schools to continue following the current federal guidelines.
Hunt asked and his colleagues agreed, however, that staff should start to make a stronger effort to track food waste at lunch times.
Miller said it has been good for the schools to be incorporating more fresh produce. She reported that one female student at Rogers High School told her that the girl eats most of her fruits and vegetables at school. An active, busy lifestyle outside of school makes it too easy and convenient to be filling up on potato chips, she said.
Hunt said he believes that the Rogers student enjoying the fresh produce only at school would be an exception. “Healthy eating habits do not start in school,” he said.