Children in many school districts in Santa Barbara County enjoy healthy lunches cooked from scratch. Photo courtesy of the Orfalea Foundations

Children in many schoolhouse districts in Santa Barbara County enjoy lunches cooked from scratch. Photo courtesy of the Orfalea Foundations

A week after Congress backtracked on some primal components of landmark schoolhouse nutrition legislation, diet advocates are saying that the boxing for healthy school food needs to be fought district by district, along the lines of what several California districts are already doing.

Last year, Congress passed the Good for you, Hunger Complimentary Kids Act, which required school meals to have more whole grains, fruits and vegetables and less salt and fewer calories in an try to gainsay childhood obesity and the early onset of diabetes in children.

But final calendar week a Senate and Firm briefing committee, under pressure from some food industry lobbyists, blocked implementation of some of the new regulations. As things currently stand, the tomato sauce on pizza will count as a total serving of a vegetable and potatoes (typically french fries) can exist served every day instead of restricted to two days.

"The federal regime is living in some alternate universe while America's kids grow sicker and fatter in the real world," said Amy Kalafa, author of a book on the discipline titledLunch Wars. "This is but another example of why nosotros need to fight this battle on the local level."

Just in many school cafeterias around the state, including Los Angeles Unified, Yuba City Unified, and xiv districts in Santa Barbara Canton, what the federal government does has less relevance because of local initiatives already underway. In those districts, salad confined, cooking from scratch, and eating local, organic produce are already on the menu.

In August, in a major new initiative, LAUSD chef Mark Baida implemented a new dejeuner menu providing more nutritious meals. In Yuba City, New York–trained chef David Heggard has created food courts on the high schoolhouse campus that offer meals cooked from scratch, such every bit barbecues each day and stir-fry in the Chinese restaurant.

One of the almost notable examples of schools serving upwardly healthier meals — and making them profitable at the same time — is in Santa Barbara Canton. 14 school districts are participating in s'Cool Nutrient, a 10-year initiative supported by the Orfalea Foundation, a Santa Barbara–focused philanthropy started by Paul Orfalea, the founder of Kinko's.

Project director Kathleen de Chadenèdes and her staff determined that the master obstacles to schools offer salubrious food were a lack of cooking equipment and untrained cafeteria staff. So s'Cool Food set up "cooking camps," run by chefs, to show cafeteria staff how to cook from scratch. And and then the project provided these staff with the equipment they needed to put into practise what they had learned.

With these initial costs footed by the Orfalea Foundation, districts have been able to operate in the black. Nancy Weiss is a chef and managing director of the Section of Diet for Santa Barbara School Districts, which includes Santa Barbara Simple School District and Santa Barbara Secondary School District. A little more than half of the elementary school children receive free or reduced-price meals, and about 30% of the secondary students do.

Weiss says she was able to turn a "heat and serve" school meals program that was losing coin into a homemade food enterprise with a upkeep surplus. The principal means she has saved money are by eliminating middlemen in purchasing food and by focusing staff fourth dimension on cooking. These strategies include:

  • Buying pre-cut meat and poultry straight from the U.S. Agronomics Section'south co-op in Petaluma instead of buying the same USDA meat from a distributor subsequently it has been processed by a food company. For example, she uses pre-cut poultry to make barbecued chicken instead of ownership frozen chicken nuggets. When she took over, the district was spending virtually $400,000 on processed food. This year, the cost is downward to almost $x,000, she said.
  • Buying organic produce from local farmers. Earlier Weiss took over, the district was buying a case of 24 lettuce heads that were not organic at a cost of about $22 or higher, depending on the weather condition and the scarcity of the production. She at present gets a case of simply-picked organic lettuce for a guaranteed toll of $11. "We can lock in the price considering the farmers know that all our dollars are focused on them."
  • Serving what is in season. Weiss says she and her staff explain to kids that they better enjoy their plums now because it volition be a year before they return. This is one of the many ways, she says, that lunch can exist used to brainwash children.
  • Buying directly from manufacturers. Many of the students in her district are Latinos, and so tortillas are of import. She buys them straight from a manufacturer in Oxnard. A pack of 60 tortillas costs $1.07 compared with $2.25 through a grocery distributor.
  • Saving staff fourth dimension and reducing waste material past eliminating wrapped, individualized portions. Students can put food straight on their trays, which have sections for milk, utensils, and food. In the past, food service staff would, for example, put fruit cocktail in cups, put the hat on the cups, and then hand the cups to the kids. Now kids but choose the fresh fruit they want from the salad bar.

Some other district in Santa Barbara County, Goleta Matrimony, is saving money and reducing waste by eliminating most of the Styrofoam dishes, all straws (kids just drink from the milk cartons), plastic utensils (kids use metal ones that are then collected and washed), and all individually wrapped condiments. Instead, schools provide additive stations or squeeze bottles at the end of the serving line.

Some other way to raise revenue for the programme is to appeal to adults, says Goleta Union's Food Service Director Sharon Baird. The breakfast carte du jour is so appetizing, she says, that parents who drop their kids off at school often stay—and pay. Breakfast includes entrées such as homemade hot oatmeal, granola, bootleg whole-grain muffins, fruit smoothies, and a yogurt parfait with toppings customers tin can cull, such as diced fruit or granola. Each mean solar day, she also offers a special item, such every bit French toast, waffles, or a breakfast sandwich or burrito.

And by adding salad bars at every school in the simple commune, Baird has attracted teachers and other staff as paying customers. The salad bar approach likewise encourages children to effort new foods, she says, because they have the freedom to choose.

Although the Santa Barbara districts take the huge advantage of receiving philanthropic back up, other districts can find cost-savings means to motility toward healthier eating, nutrition advocates say. All districts can take advantage of their purchasing power to obtain healthier food at lower costs, they say, and think creatively nigh how all-time to use staff fourth dimension and resource.

"Districts, big and small, have found opportunities not only to feed kids healthier and ameliorate tasting food, only also to connect students and their community to a more local, visible and accessible food organization," author Kalafa said. "Why wait for Congress to dictate? The more model programs we tin create, the more we tin demonstrate that this could be the norm for all."

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