I began my career in food service in the Houlton schools 32 years ago. In those 32 years, there have been tremendous changes in how the breakfast and lunch programs have been delivered to students in our schools as well as across the country.
In 1983, I began work as a baker at a time when all of the bread products served in our program were made “from scratch” by the cooks in the school district. The servers were required to place on each student’s tray a serving from each of the five food groups, and students had no choices of what those items might be.
White milk was the only milk served along with one entree and canned fruits or vegetables. The USDA commodities that schools received consisted of white flour, butter, canned fruits and vegetables, canned and bone-in chicken, shortening, rice, etc. The director of food services provided a monthly lunch menu; however, the breakfast menus were created in the kitchens of each school building.
Students dropped a gray ticket in a designated container when they took their breakfast tray and used a red ticket when they took their lunch tray. At the end of the meal, the cafeteria staff would sort the tickets into three piles to determine free, reduced, and paid lunches while also recording meal totals on a monthly report.
By 1996, when I became the food services director, we were still serving food from each of the five food groups, but students could choose to take only three of the five items in order for the lunch to be reimbursable to the lunch program. We were permitted to purchase bread instead of making it in our kitchens and also began to serve chocolate milk. Later we began to analyze the nutrients in our servings and soon the federal government required schools to purchase Nutrikids Menu, which allowed cafeterias to analyze the daily lunch menu.
Schools also purchased software programs that now allow students to put in their student ID numbers so free, reduced, and paid lunches are automatically recorded in the system. This new system allowed school cafeterias to do a nutrient analysis of each meal and portion control became more regulated.
Around 2010, the federal government took another look at the breakfast/lunch programs. In the past five years, school lunch programs have been required to use 51 percent whole wheat products. We serve two choices of vegetables and fruit daily for lunch; portion sizes for lunches went from a fourth of a cup to half a cup, for example.
We are also required to be within a specific calorie range based on the grade level of students. We have to account for saturated fats and make sure there are no trans fat. Beginning in the 2014 – 2015 school year, we became required to watch the sodium content so our lunch meal needs to be under 740 mg. of sodium. At least two fruits or one fruit and one vegetable had to be offered for breakfast; we are also required to complete a nutrient analysis for the breakfast program.
As a society we are more conscious of our food intake and public schools are no exception to that trend. We hope that introducing more fruits and vegetables into the meals of our youth will help in the development of a more healthy diet for our youth and that those dietary changes will be carried forward into their adult life habits.
