An Anchorage School District student nutrition coordinator was recently quoted in the Daily News as saying "the district food program cannot be expected to change the world" (meaning student eating habits). "Student Nutrition is just in the business of serving breakfast and lunch."
If that's the way Student Nutrition sees its role, perhaps it should be called the student feedlot program.
Nutrition is not a matter of merely filling empty bellies, but rather educating about healthy eating and serving healthy food. From my own experience I know students will eat nutritious food if we offer it to them starting at a young age.
While working as café manager at the Northern Lights ABC School I piloted a salad bar for the middle school students. It was a success. More than 60 percent of the students chose to eat from the salad bar, with no food wasted. What did the trick? The students could freely ladle my house-made, low-fat ranch dressing on top of their chosen salad ingredients.
But, several months after the project began I was ordered to discontinue it on the grounds that it was too expensive. I documented that the salad cost less than the frozen vegetables the students routinely tossed in the trash. Student Nutrition failed to respond. Eventually the PTA convinced Student Nutrition to continue the salad bar.
Here are other ways in which the School District and Student Nutrition demonstrate how little they seem to care about healthy eating. In grades K -8 the first students going through the lunch line have 20 minutes to eat. The last students have only 10, not much time for a meal, and for many the time is divided as follows: Sit down, open lunch box or cafeteria meal, socialize, nibble dessert, socialize more. By then lunch is over. Perfectly good, mostly untouched food is dumped in the garbage. The students learn neither good nutrition, respect for food when half the world is hungry nor the amount of money wasted.
In the same ADN column a dietician with the Alaska Department of Health noted "there is a big disconnect between the nutrition we're teaching in the classroom and what happens when they go into the cafeteria." True and absurd. Perhaps it is too late to dramatically change the menus for current high school students, but certainly ASD can link what elementary school students learn about food with what ASD feeds them.
At one point I offered to teach at no cost to the School District a USDA-approved class on nutrition for the first and second grades. The principal, teachers and PTA were enthusiastic. When I sought the OK of Student Nutrition, the answer was no, "we are not in the teaching business," but Student Nutrition, in collaboration with teachers, should indeed be in the teaching business. Great opportunities can be found when we combine food and learning.
While at Benny Benson Alternative School, the school counselor and I collaborated on a successful program to train students for entry-level, fast-food service positions. They learned basics of food safety, customer service, teamwork and they got their Municipality of Anchorage food handler cards.
When I taught cooking classes to high school students in the Bristol Bay region, the students were excited to learn to use local food resources in new ways. They enjoyed the cooking. They enjoyed the eating and proudly shared their new knowledge and skills in a feast for the community.
Complaints about food in the Anchorage School District and concerns about student eating habits are not new. Student Nutrition has a long history of resisting change. It lacks leadership with the courage to be creative in designing meals that both reflect contemporary knowledge about healthy eating and appeal to young people.
Parents, teachers, the School Board and School District leadership need to work together to mandate that Student Nutrition be held accountable for providing a higher standard of food within a specified time frame. Our children deserve nothing less.
Michel Villon is a lifelong food service professional and instructor who also worked as a cafe manager for the Anchorage School District.
By MICHEL VILLON