Changing student lunches, one tray at a time

At local schools, healthier fare gets high grades

November 02, 2011|By Michael Prager, Globe Correspondent

At Manchester Essex Regional Middle High School (above, below center),… (photos by wendy maeda/globe…)

MANCHESTER - In the fight for its students’ health, the cafeteria at Manchester Essex Regional Middle High School is well situated. One row of windows looks down onto the gymnasium. The other row looks out over the “edible schoolyard,’’ 13 raised vegetable beds that educate students about nutrition and also feed them.

Every day, cafeteria staff offers eight choices, often made from scratch. Recent options included wheat-berry salad and pesto pasta made with garden kale instead of basil. Soup lovers could choose vegetable or butternut squash, served with homemade rolls - whole wheat, of course.

The move toward scratch cooking accelerated last year when nutrition director Sheila Parisien saw the direction in which federal guidelines were headed. Proposed school lunch rules, published in January, include more fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, reduced sodium, and low-fat and fat-free milk only. Regulations are expected to take effect next year. You can have all the rules you want, but if the cafeteria’s customers won’t eat, rules won’t improve nutrition. Are Manchester Essex kids buying in? Yes and no.

Sales - about 800 meals a day for the 1,500 students - are steady, at least at the Middle High School, but Donna Silva, one of four full-time food service workers, says students “aren’t crazy about the changes. The younger generation coming in doesn’t know the difference, but the kids who had the other food know the difference, and they want to know where it went.’’

Parisien and other directors say that changing menus isn’t simple. Before kale pasta appeared, for example, it was offered as a sample. Staff members go into classrooms to explain changes. “They need to know why we switched from white pasta to brown pasta, and why they should eat our burger instead of a McDonald’s burger. We did a demonstration [of relative fat content] between our burger and a Burger King burger and the Burger King burger just looked like a big Crisco sandwich,’’ she says.

Some students don’t need a lot of persuading. “Instead of trying to convince them, they’re telling us what they’d like,’’ says Parisien.

One example is the edible schoolyard. It’s led by three “green scholars,’’ including senior Simon McIntosh, 18, who is thinking about a career in sustainability. “Right now my focus is in agriculture, but I’m into all of it,’’ he says. Other students are tracking the cafeteria’s food chain, identifying highly processed products, and those with a high carbon footprint.