School menus must consider student tastes

By MARION FIELD- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

I recently accepted the opportunity to work as food service Director for St. John Evangelist School in Schenectady. Although I had no prior experience in school food service, I brought work experience as a nutritionist and training in the culinary arts.

Most importantly, as a parent of school-aged children, I have an understanding of what foods children will eat!

St. John the Evangelist School participates in the National School Lunch program, which provides free or reduced-cost meals to qualified students. Our goal at the school is to serve food that appeals to students and, at the same time, meets nutritional requirements set by the Child Nutrition Program of the New York State Education Department and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

While planning the menu, I always keep in mind that the students are the customers. I take into consideration what the students will eat, what foods we receive through the USDA commodity food program, our budget, the equipment we have in the kitchen and staff time.

Fortunately, St. John the Evangelist is a small school, so we are able to purchase foods on sale at local stores. While I'm still learning about school food service, I'm gradually making changes in the menu, as well.

In March, for example, we received apples from the USDA food commodity program. At first, we served them whole. We found that of the students who took one, many did not eat it or only took a few bites.

I decided to slice the apples up and serve them with peanut butter, and we found the students ate more of the fruit.

Recently, we served pizza and I decided to use whole-grain pizza dough that I purchased at a local grocery store. I had the lunch monitors ask the students what they thought of the pizza - and found that the majority of them liked it better than the white, preformed dough that was previously served.

Other changes have been simple, just to give food more flavor and eye appeal: for example, I add sautéed onions and garlic to the tomato sauce. After boiling hot dogs, I cook them on the grill for a few minutes before serving.

I'll continue to make gradual changes to the menu. Every month, I will introduce a new food or different method of preparation for favorite foods. For example, in April, I plan to serve brown rice and vegetarian beans with sauce.

Other future plans include serving fresh, in-season fruits and vegetables. I plan to look into purchasing some of our food from local sources. I'll also be exploring ways to use the school lunch program as a means to educate students about food and nutrition.[[In-content Ad]]