Food Fight

Some parents say Montgomery County schools aren't moving fast enough to make school lunches healthier. The schools say they're doing everything they can. But will kids even eat food that's better for them?

By Julie Rasicot

When Carrie Witkop's 8-year-old son Tommy began getting headaches during school more than a year ago, the Chevy Chase mother of three tried to find out why. After considering the boy's day at Rosemary Hills Primary School, Witkop thought she had found the culprit: school cafeteria lunches.

Although her two older sons had eaten school lunches regularly, Witkop wondered whether the food was somehow affecting her youngest son. So she and fellow mother Aviva Goldfarb of Chevy Chase, founder of "The Six O'Clock Scramble" online news-letter and cookbook, decided to take a closer look at what their kids were eating. What they found, they say, was not only unappetizing—it was unhealthy.

While the descriptions on the lunch menu seemed to offer healthy meals, Witkop and Goldfarb say a closer look at the nutritional content revealed what they consider to be too much fat and sugar and processed foods—like chicken that a chicken wouldn't recognize. Fresh fruit and vegetables were in short supply. Witkop says Tommy's headaches disappeared soon after he started bringing lunch to school. "It was clear to me," she says. "It was a direct correlation."

With Tommy's problem solved, Witkop and Goldfarb could have stopped there. But they didn't. They set out to persuade Montgomery County Public School (MCPS) officials to improve the lunch program. Working with their local PTAs for more than a year, they have written letters suggesting changes, met with school food service officials and toured the central production facility in Rockville. Last spring, more than 200 people associated with schools in Takoma Park and Silver Spring signed an email petition to the county Board of Education offering suggested school lunch improvements, ranging from buying produce from local farmers to providing nutritional information on menus and creating school gardens.

These parents are riding a wave of concern over the growing epidemic of child obesity and the unprecedented health problems arising in overweight children. An annual survey by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "found that about one-third of U.S. children are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight. In total, about 25 million U.S. children and adolescents are overweight or nearly overweight."

"From the pediatrician's standpoint of how much obesity I'm seeing, it's overwhelmingly obvious that school lunches are part of the problem," says Jennifer Tender of Bethesda, a pediatrician and mother of three. Tender and three other pediatricians with kids in county schools have also written to school food service officials pushing for healthier food on the lunch menu.

It's not only parents and health professionals who have set their sights on school lunches and the unhealthy eating habits they can foster. Across the country, school districts – and even state legislatures – are moving to eliminate junk food from schools and provide healthier choices for children.

With all the national interest in improving kids' eating habits, many Montgomery County parents are perplexed at the school district's response to their concerns. While representatives of the schools' Division of Food and Nutrition Services did hold a forum with parents at North Chevy Chase Elementary School in April, Goldfarb and Witkop say that officials seem to see them as enemies, rather than allies. "It's so frustrating," says Goldfarb. "We have been working on this for so long and so little has happened. I really feel like they're playing games with us."

The Takoma Park parents were feeling equally frustrated, say Noah Matson and Tim Male, two of the parents who spearheaded the email petition. As of press time, the school board had responded with "deafening silence" to their letter, says Matson, whose daughter, Sarina, is a first-grader at Takoma Park Elementary.

"The whole system is kind of broken," he says. "It's not just about the actual calories and fat content of the food."

But the lack of response has more to do with the nature of such a large school system than lack of interest, says school board Vice President Shirley Brandman. The board has received an "overwhelming volume" of correspondence on nutrition issues, she says, adding that she was hoping to meet with concerned parents over the summer. "I really want to be clear that we're not trying to ignore their concerns," she says.

Food service officials say they've been taking steps to improve the nutritional value of school food, including banning the sale of such items as donuts and candy during school hours, and eliminating sodas from vending machines. Only water and beverages that are at least 50 percent juice can now be sold in vending machines. Although some schools, like Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, have soda machines, the students can't purchase items between 7 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. The machines have timers.

Division Director Kathy Lazor says the quality of a school lunch is a matter of perception as much as reality, involving more complex issues than whether the French fries are baked or fried. She says the food service's goal is to deliver the most nutritious and balanced meals it can – given the limitations imposed by participation in the federal school lunch program, which includes nutrition requirements and the use of federal commodities. There's also the logistical challenge of producing about 100,000 meals a day for the county's 195 schools, and the need to be financially self-sufficient, Lazor says.

The director, who says her team is always on the lookout for ways to offer healthier food, says parents seem to believe that the school system looks for the cheapest products to serve their children. She insists that's not the case. "We have brand names," Lazor says. "There is this perception that in some way it's substandard because it's school. That's far from the truth."

And the belief among some parents that the food service caters to students' fast-food tastes because it must break even?

"We're not trying to compete with fast food. We're trying to serve things they're familiar with," Lazor says. "The budget doesn't drive the menu. What drives the menu is what students will accept."

That argument doesn't fly with County Council member George L. Leventhal of Takoma Park, who chairs the council's health and human services committee and has been vocal on the need to improve school food. Leventhal notes that there are any number of school districts, including nearby Fairfax County, that are doing a better job. "The excuses they give are not persuasive. It's not a priority," he says. "I think we need more variety in the menu. I think it's eminently doable. It's just the lethargy in the school system."

Voting with their tastebuds
Although the trend is toward providing healthier food, the question remains: Will kids be satisfied with a menu offering yogurt, fresh vegetables, soy burgers and salad? Food service officials point out that students eat foods that are familiar and reject those that aren't, recalling an experiment with a grilled cheese sandwich on one slice of whole wheat and one slice of white bread. The sandwiches mostly ended up in the trash.

Mary Shipe, cafeteria manager at Herbert Hoover Middle School in Potomac, knows firsthand how fickle students can be. That's why she occasionally cooks an additional item that she knows they'll enjoy, like her popular beef lo mein.

"We put out more than most people because I believe kids should have a choice," she says. "We put on veggie patties—the kids refused them. They're kids."

Lazor notes that new items only remain on the menu if students accept them. For example, a vegetable egg roll was put on the menu after testing positively in some schools. But it hadn't been tested in schools with Asian populations, whose students rejected it because it was "very cabbage-y," she says. An experiment with whole grain pasta also flopped. "They seem to pick it out right away," she says.

But parents say getting students to eat healthy foods is a matter of exposure – and removing the junk food choices. "They think children don't like to eat healthy foods," Witkop says. "Aviva and I are coming from the idea that children will eat anything if it's presented in a healthy way."

Goldfarb recalls a day when she was in the lunchroom at Rosemary Hills Elementary School and a child asked her to peel an orange. As soon as she did, she was besieged by other children and "then I was running around peeling oranges as fast as I could," she says. "Kids don't have time and younger ones don't know how to peel," she says.

Some secondary school students say they'd like to see more choices on the salad bar, but others say they're unlikely to choose fruits and vegetables no matter how they're served.

Fourteen-year-old Eric Ruggieri, a freshman at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, says he usually eats some of the vegetables and salads, but most of his friends don't touch the vegetables. And he's fairly certain that replacing pizza and cookies with healthier choices like yogurt and celery sticks would not be popular.

"There is too much opportunity to have junk food, but there's enough healthy food. Kids just don't choose to eat it," says Ruggieri, an accomplished swimmer. "If the parents are that concerned, don't give junk food at home. It's up to parents to teach good habits."

Perception vs. Reality
Are county school lunches really that bad for students?

In 2007, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, gave Montgomery County schools a grade of "B+" in its sixth annual report card examining food  served in 22 major school districts across the country. Fairfax schools received an "A-," tying for  second place with two other school systems. The report examines school systems' nutrition education efforts and the ways students are encouraged to eat healthy food.

Montgomery County, the 17th largest school district in the country, scored 87 points out of a possible 100, improving from 84 points and a "B" grade in 2006. The school district's score rose, the report notes, due to an increase in the number of fresh fruit and low-fat vegetable side dish offerings. Vegetarian and vegan options are available daily, although the items are printed on menus only three times weekly. Bottled water and juice are always on hand.

Fairfax, the 13th largest district in the nation, scored 92 points. While the district's score dropped from an "A" in 2006, the report notes that Fairfax "continues to be a standout program." A variety of  vegan options are featured on the menu daily, including a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, veggie patties and pasta with marinara sauce. Brown rice is added to pizza crust and Fairfax is introducing couscous. All sides are low fat, from fresh broccoli and baby carrots to kiwi and orange quarters.

There are many areas where Montgomery schools still can do better, even by making minor improvements, parents say. Some burning questions: Why can't the schools serve more fresh produce and buy it from local farmers? Why can't kids eat regular food like chicken breasts instead of processed products? Why can't schools make food on-site and train staff to serve it in ways that kids will eat it, such as offering sliced apples instead of whole?

Understanding the answers to these questions requires a look at how school lunches are produced.

According to Lazor, 100,000 of the county's nearly 140,000 students buy lunch each day. For the elementary schools alone, 34,000 lunches are pre-packed daily at the school system's central production facility in Rockville for delivery to schools where they are baked and served.

Most elementary school kitchens aren't equipped or large enough to prepare and store food on-site. Retrofitting them would be cost prohibitive, officials say. Secondary school kitchens are more production-oriented and receive deliveries of produce directly, which is used for salad bars and other items. While buying produce from local farmers seems like a good idea, the quantities required by the food service are so large that "there really aren't any local places that provide the quantities we need," Lazor says. The food service contracts with major purveyors, such as Lancaster Foods of Jessup, one of the largest wholesale produce companies in the mid-Atlantic region.

The need to provide consistency in food portions also limits the food that can be served, such as real chicken pieces. "We have to guarantee and be able to prove there's two ounces of meat in that serving," she says. "It's very difficult to do that [with a chicken breast]."

The food must be cooked and held at a certain temperature for safety reasons, which causes products to dry out and become unpalatable. The chicken patty made of chicken and soy can withstand the holding process better than a regular piece of chicken, says Lazor. The county schools participate in the National School Lunch Program, which means meals must meet dietary requirements concerning fat, nutrients and calories in order to be federally reimbursable. As noted in the Physicians for Responsible Medicine report, "the USDA's Traditional Food Based Menu Planning approach is an inflexible system that makes it more difficult for schools to offer meat alternatives and some other healthful foods."

That means, for example, the food service must produce items such as a grilled cheese sandwich made with four slices of cheese to provide the required two ounces. Some students complain that the sandwich is too cheesy. Under the old, nutrient-based planning system, which was dropped in the 1990s, the same sandwich would have had only one ounce of cheese.

"In order to have a reimbursable meal, there's no way to get around it," Lazor says.

In addition, the food service must use commodities provided through the program, which include canned fruit, and beef and chicken, which is sent to processing facilities to be converted into ready-to-use products like chicken nuggets and patties. "Because of the way in which the school lunch program is structured, it can cost a school district more than twice as much to provide a high-fiber, low-fat veggie burger instead of a high-fat, zero-fiber burger," says the physicians' group report.

More improvements on the way
Even with such constraints, Lazor points out that the food service is working to provide healthy meals.

Soy is incorporated into processed products such as nuggets and patties. All foods are baked, not fried. Whole grain rolls are gradually replacing white flour products. Vegetables are fresh or frozen, not canned, she says. Students can usually choose from apples, oranges or bananas, as well as small bags of baby carrots. Applesauce is served unsweetened.

Upcoming changes in the ordering process for USDA commodities mean the food service should be able to order canned fruit in natural juice or light syrup this year, Lazor says. "We're looking at other fresh vegetables, but they're not popular with students," she says.

In answer to parents' concerns about whole fruit being accessible to kids, the food service is working with purveyors to find a packaged sliced apple product with a suitable shelf life. "If it's out there, we've tried to find it," Lazor says. "As we find different products that are available, we put them on our menu if they meet our time constraints."

Goldfarb says she's pleased with changes such as serving whole-grain buns and baby carrots, but she'd still like to see foods like fresh bell pepper slices, hummus and raisins replace the green beans and corn that "look wilted and scary."

Food service employees also regularly test new items in pilot projects at various schools. Some completely soy items, such as a black bean burger and "chick'n nuggets," which were hits in several middle schools last spring, will be included in bids to purveyors this year, according to Lazor. As for trans fat, the most recent target of the nutrition conscious, the food service began eliminating it from foods more than two years ago, says Don Ruehle, supervisor of the central production facility.

Lazor says 94 percent of trans fat will be eliminated from foods this school year.

Fickle consumers
Parents acknowledge that the food service is making improvements, however incremental, to the lunch program. But they also worry that kids are developing unhealthy eating habits, especially if they often purchase a la carte items sold in secondary schools, including soft pretzels, cookies, bagels, crackers and chips, ice cream and fruit chews made with juice and corn syrup.

"It's still getting kids hooked on pizza at least once a week," Leventhal says. "There's still too much junk food in the menu."

Although food service officials tout that the district's standards concerning the nutritional content for a la carte products are stricter than the state's requirements, that doesn't mean much if a student chooses only those items for lunch, parents say. Which is a common occurrence, according to students like Tender's daughter, Alyssa, a 13-year-old freshman at Walt Whitman High School. There are students "who just load up on the snack bar," she says.

So why don't the schools teach students more about nutrition so they'll make better choices? And why not get concerned parents involved? "What I as a parent would like is a little more say," Tender says. "This is our goal: to eat healthy, nutritious food. What can we do?"

Lazor thinks concerned parents might change their opinions about school food if they were better informed. That's why she's planning a wellness fair this fall to provide information about the lunch program and nutrition education curriculum. She's also planning to hold more forums and attend more PTA meetings to answer parents' questions. "For us, it's a continuous marketing effort," she says. "We have to retool our marketing efforts to make sure parents understand the components."

Julie Rasicot is a Silver Spring freelance writer who also writes for the Washington Post and other publications