What Nobody Tells Parents About School Lunch

by Maryann Tomovich Jacobsen, MS, RD

Recently, due to my partnership with schoolmenu.com, I’ve taken a closer look at the National School Lunch Program.
After talking to several school Food Service Directors, I’m eager to share what’s really going on in school cafeterias across America. And I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

1. Schools have to meet nutrition standards: In 1996, legislation was passed mandating schools to provide meals that contain 1/3rd the Recommended Daily Allowances for key nutrients including calories, protein, calcium, iron and vitamins A and C. The nutrition standards also limits total fat (30% of calories or less) and saturated fat (10% of calories or less). Schools are encouraged, but not required, to reduce levels of cholesterol and sodium and increase the amounts of whole grains, fruits, vegetables and dietary fiber.

Everyone agrees that these standards need to be revised as they are still based on the 1995 Dietary Guidelines. The Institute of Medicine has developed recommendations to update the nutrition standards to reflect recent dietary guidelines. Those changes should be coming soon.

2. Money is tight: Most parents don’t realize that Food Service Directors, like CEOs, are running a million dollar business. If the district has 20, 50, or 100 schools, that means operating that many cafeterias. Their job is to provide low cost, nutritious meals to every kid in the district. School Food Service is usually the only department in the district that is designed to operate like a profit making business.

“I have $1.68 to spend on each meal,” said one Director. “Fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive and really impact our budget but we find ways to include them.” Another Director told me that "when possible, we constantly try to improve the nutrition of all the foods we offer (including snacks) by using whole wheat flour and lowering the fat.”

3. Not every food is what it appears to be: Food Service Directors often receive parental concerns about the items they serve. Yet in order to meet the nutrition standards, and please kids by making the food both appealing and tasteful, they need to be creative. That means, for example, the pizza is made with whole grains and reduced fat cheese. There is a major effort to make half of the grains served to be whole grains, which is consistent with current dietary guidelines.

The quality of meals has improved drastically from 20 years ago when fried chicken was the best seller with French fries not far behind. There has been considerable effort in changing how food is prepared in schools.

There has been an effort to eliminate all fried food in schools. Today, french fries means baked fries!

4. Schools hire registered dietitians: The people responsible for running the Food Service Departments all across the country are highly trained professionals. School districts employ nutrition professionals including registered dietitians. In larger districts there are usually multiple dietitians, who are responsible for creating the regular menus, while others are in charge of special diets and education.

In addition to the dietary challenges, there is the challenge of the business side, which includes facilities, management, labor, supplies and vendor relations. Basically, its not much different than managing any major restaurant chain.

Parents ought to know that the people preparing and planning meals for their kids are educated in the area of health and nutrition as well as business.

5. School food service workers are a dedicated bunch: School nutrition professionals are a hard working group of people. Most have been in their jobs for many years. However, there are lots of new highly trained young directors coming into this growing profession. And while they all say that improvements are needed, they seem to love what they do and embrace the challenges of the future.

Unfortunately, most of the press on school lunch is negative. And the school lunch lady continues to be the butt of late night TV jokes. As a result, they get little recognition. But, in my brief introduction to their world, I must admit I am very impressed with their professionalism, their knowledge and most especially their love and enthusiasm for the work they do.  There’s a lot of good stuff going on behind the scenes. And that deserves some press, too.

Both here on schoolmenu.com and on my own web site www.raisehealthyeaters.com we will continue to inform parents of the many benefits that come from having your children participate in the school meals program