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School Lunches Go Local
Produced by Jennifer Brandel on Tuesday, September 16, 2008
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Kids eat lunch at Faraday Elementary School's cafeteria. (Photo by Jennifer Brandel) |
Who decides what Chicago Public School students eat for lunch? The National School Lunch Program. Its dietary guidelines were established in 1946, and they haven't changed much over the past half-century. So it's left to local school districts and their food services to step up. At our city's public schools deep fryers, whole milk and trans fats are gone, and fresh fruits and vegetables are on the menu twice a week. Now in addition to what’s on the lunch tray, they're trying to change where it comes from. As part of our series Chicago Matters: Growing Forward, we bring you this report.
Related: School Lunch Politics
It’s 11:45 am at Faraday Elementary School in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood. It’s lunchtime, and over the next hour, more than 250 hungry kids will pass through the school cafeteria. Lunchroom manager Leola Smiley reads off the day’s choices:
SMILEY: Cheesy mac with ham, Italian meatball sandwiches, peanut butter bar, chef salad. Our fruits and vegetables: fresh broccoli, mixed fruit cocktail and our desert, a cookie.
Faraday is a typical Chicago Public School, just about every student eats the free or reduced price lunch served.
What ends up on their plates is dictated by the National School Lunch Program. That’s the federally assisted meal program, started back in the 1940s. Under its terms the federal government both reimburses schools if they meet their nutrition guidelines and donates a substantial amount of food to the school districts. Chicago schools alone receive $11 million worth of foodstuffs annually.
Most of the food from the feds is processed…like meats, cheese and canned fruits and vegetables.
Last year the district and its main food service company Chartwells Thompson Hospitality decided to put fresh fruits and vegetables on the menu twice a week.
MOJICA: We know that Chicago has some of the fattest kids in the nation. And we are trying everything we can do to combat that.
Jason Mojica is a dining room supervisor for Chartwells.
MOJICA: The nutritional value of a fresh vegetable is much greater than that of a canned vegetable. We’re saying hey – we know we have a problem – this is what we’re going to do from our end to try and fix that problem.
If the students at Faraday are any indication, this was a good move.
BRANDEL: Do you guys like fruits and vegetables?
STUDENTS: Yes!
BRANDEL: What about canned vegetables?
STUDENTS: No!
BRANDEL: What about fresh vegetables?
STUDENTS: Yes!
BRANDEL: What about fresh fruit?
STUDENTS: Yes!
But Bob Bloomer, Chartwells’ regional Vice President, says the fresh stuff was actually a hard sell. A lot of it ended up in the garbage can.
Many kids had never seen whole fruits before. They got turned off by the fuzz on peaches and anything with a slight bruise. And in some cases the lunchroom staff had no idea what to do with fresh products.
BLOOMER: I’ve seen heads of broccoli almost on a child’s plate that was so heavy that a kid almost couldn’t carry it because they just cut the bottom off and put it out there.
Despite these obstacles, Chartwells has plans to do more. Under a new pilot program, Faraday and 29 other schools will be serving fruits and vegetables grown right here in this region.
In some ways, this pilot program is a response to the environmental movement. Eating locally is a trend that’s made its way into the region’s restaurants, grocery stores and homes. But Bloomer says the decision to switch to local produce also reflects economic pressures.
BLOOMER: Of course with the cost of fuel today, it just makes sense, too. It’s going to cost a lot less to truck something from the middle of the state Illinois, to bring it in from New York.
Since Illinois main crops are corn and soybeans, Chartwells has to go beyond the state for food.
ROSENFIELD: These ones right here are Ida red, then you can see back off into the distance here you can see all the empire apples and golden delicious and there’s the Paula red trees over there, red delicious behind us.
Tom Rosenfeld farms an apple orchard in Berrien Center, Michigan. It’s about 100 miles from Chicago.
ROSENFIELD: You’re kind of at ground central of Southwest Michigan fruit right here.
His apples are destined for the cafeterias participating in the pilot.
Chartwells is going to Michigan – as well as Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana to get the variety it needs for school cafeterias.
Going further afield doesn’t necessarily guarantee Chartwells will find enough food. Peter Testa is the president of Testa Produce, a wholesale food distributor partnering with Chartwells on the pilot program.
TESTA: Now this is a Michigan plum tomato, that’s a Florida plum tomato and this is a California plum tomato.
Testa’s a proponent of local food. His company has long supplied some of Chicago’s top restaurants with regional produce. But when it comes to schools, he’s a realist. Testa could probably find enough produce for 30 schools, but not if the pilot expanded district wide.
TESTA: Say they added like, 300 schools, now you have to have 300 cases. And so if you go to the local guy say you got 300 cases and you got them on this, this and this? And the guy’s gonna tell you - no way.
With 400,000 students and over 35 million lunches served each year the Chicago Public School district would be a guaranteed market for farmers. But Chicago’s schools have come late to the trend of eating local. Many area farmers have already committed their produce to big customers like Whole Foods and Wal-Mart.
Beyond supply, the biggest issue may be money. CPS ran a $30 million deficit in its food service program last year. The federal government’s reimbursement rate hasn’t kept up with inflation and the price of food and labor costs keep rising.
Louise Esaian oversees food services for Chicago Public Schools, including the pilot program. She’s excited about having local foods on the menu, but she’s not sure if it’s going to be possible to keep it up in the long term.
ESAIAN: With all the programs that we take a look at within Chicago Public Schools and our food service department, we’re really trying to look at programs that are far-reaching and sustainable and that we can financially support.
Right now the financial support for the pilot program comes from Chartwells Thompson. Bob Bloomer says the company is willing to put the money up in order to stay competitive.
BLOOMER: It’s something every smart company is doing – it’s just there’s a lot of roadblocks and there’s a lot to make it happen. It’s not easy. It’s never easy.
Still, he hopes fresh local produce could one day reach every lunchroom in Chicago’s public school system.
BLOOMER: Whatever we do for kids and children has to be for all the children of Chicago. It can’t just be for a school here and a school there. So whatever changes we make have to be sweeping changes that are for all the kids.
Sweeping changes are coming though – at least to the National School Lunch Program. Work is underway to replace the program’s outdated guidelines with a new set of nutrition standards. The new guidelines won’t just be recommendations, but mandates telling schools what they can and cannot serve.
So affordable or not, the Chicago Public Schools and Chartwells Thompson have to do what they can to prepare. They’re hoping the local foods pilot program might prove to be another step in that direction.
For Chicago Public Radio, I’m Jennifer Brandel.
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Winnie & Pete, Buffalo Grove // Tuesday, September 16, 2008 @ 5:33 PM
It's refreshing to hear a piece like this. The reporter captures progress that is already being made. The Chicago Public Schools are working to make their lunches healthier. Perhaps this piece will open some of the roadblocks that the program may face as it moves forward. Great Work!
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