CHANGE IS WITHIN OUR REACH

SCHOOL FOOD AND THE OBESITY EPIDEMIC – PART 3

It has been argued that schools cannot improve the obesity epidemic by providing healthier food. Children learn habits at home and may throw away healthier options they are served. Why should schools go through the effort and cost of changing their menu offerings if kids will not eat it?

During and in-person interview, Aalisa Erpenbach, a kitchen assistant at Compass Public Charter School in Meridian, ID, provided insight for how schools can make a huge impact. Erpenbach said the director listens to staff’s meal suggestions/ideas and student health is highly valued.

Four years ago, Compass was in a smaller building, no one really cared about the food, and they didn’t have enough staff to make improvements. Two years later they moved into a new building and hired additional staff. Now kitchen staff can cook and prep for the next day, producing most meals from scratch.

BY JAMIE HUDSON

With extra money provided by the Free Lunch Program, they purchased more vegetables and a variety of fruits including peaches, nectarines, kiwis, strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries. They purchased more kitchen equipment like a large food processor, knives, cutting boards, food warmers, and salad bars. Items made from scratch include whole grain pizza crust and tomato sauce, Pico de gallo, and muffins with seasonal ingredients.

Erpenbach enjoys creating new options and walks around getting feedback directly from students. Middle and high schoolers have healthier menus because most upper students enjoy them. Veggie bowls with rice are popular, and once the kids try it, they usually like it. Options include taco day with roasted veggies, vegan Buddha bowls, handmade veggie burgers, baked potatoes, Thai curry, falafels, bruschetta pizza, mandarin orange salad, and taco salad in hand-pressed taco shells. Older students enjoy ethnic, diverse varieties not normally found at schools.

When asked for improvement ideas, Erpenbach said, “There are so many things. I wish overly processed food wasn’t so popular and wasn’t served to students. I wish we made everything from scratch.” She believes young kids eat less variety due to learned behaviors. “Parent think, ‘My kid won’t eat this, so I won’t even bother’ or it takes too much work to prep and fight kids to eat it. Fast food is easier.”

Erpenbach stated that schools choose the food options and some pick what is easy rather than healthy. She notes that elementary kids eat more fruits like apples and oranges if they are sliced, which takes kitchen staff prep time. If given a larger budget, she would love to make chicken nuggets from scratch so “they had real chicken” and would be healthier for students. She doesn’t believe nutritious foods are much more expensive, but preparation requires more staff.

Erpenbach teaches Nutrition and Foods at Compass and assists with Intro to Culinary and Advanced Culinary. She said having these classes, especially for younger students and their parents, could help kids be more adventurous with food choices.

“…a child’s initial rejection of a food can be modified with repeated exposure to a food, but it may take between 5–10 opportunities to taste a new food before it becomes a preferred food… Learned food preferences are related to frequency of exposure to a food. Studies of animals and humans have shown that observance of others selecting and eating a food can induce consumption of an initially disliked or unfamiliar food.” (Citation? Scott)

Erpenbach hopes the new foods learned at school encourage students to ask for more healthy options at home. “Kids are more willing to try things than people think they are. I think having other kids try things with them is more important than their parents telling them to eat it. They’re more willing to try it when other kids are trying it than parents saying, ‘You should eat it.’”

Stories like this prove change is possible, even on a tight school budget.

In Scientific American, Patrick Mustain describes how it takes time for healthy lunches to gain wide acceptance because the things taken out of them are the things kids were trained to want. He goes on to explain that he hears people comment that if kids don’t like it then they must serve something else. He compares this to kids not liking math, and how there is a different approach to making decisions about what is good for children in the classroom than in the cafeteria.

Programs are popping up across the nation to reverse kids’ negative attitudes toward healthy food. Some have successfully shown students how and why to make healthier choices. One example is Slow Food USA which “aims to reconnect youth with their food by teaching them how to grow, cook and enjoy real food.”

While many health habits are formed in the home, the CDC states, “Students in the United States engage in behaviors that place them at risk for the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among youth and adults. These behaviors often are established during childhood and adolescence and extend into adulthood; therefore, it is important to prevent such behaviors at an early age. Because schools have direct contact with more than 95 percent of our nation’s young people aged 5-17 years, they play a critical role in promoting the health and safety of young people and helping them establish lifelong healthy behavior patterns.”

Parents can also ask the school to stand up a Wellness Committee made up of staff members and parents invested in creating and implementing goals for nutrition, health and physical fitness, health education curriculum, and coordinate this with the school’s food and nutrition services operation.

It will require school, parent, community, and district action to encourage healthier choices and increase children’s health knowledge. Giving access to healthy foods and discouraging unhealthy food choices is a big step in the right direction. Schools must provide healthier meals to have healthier students, and change must start now.

If you are passionate about your child’s health or the health of children in our community, you can write to your local legislature and demand change. Tell the West Ada school district there must be accountability in place to ensure healthy food is being served to our children. There are multiple nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping schools start garden programs, and parents and caregivers can work with school staff to apply for consideration. You can also visit organizations like The Chef Ann Foundation which provides free toolkits with information for approaching local school districts to advocate for healthier student meals. The Chef Ann Foundation also offers grants for schools to receive salad bars to improve food options. chefannfoundation.org