Racine group wants students to Eat Right — in school and at home
By David Steinkraus
dsteinkraus@journaltimes.com | Posted: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 12:00 am
They don't want to point fingers or assign blame, but a group of Racine residents does want to see change come to school lunch programs. That's how it began. Now they want to encourage better eating on the part of everyone.
"To me it's just unacceptable to have the highest cost for health care in the world, by two times, and be ranked 31st in the world, I think, for health care," said Heidi Fannin. "It doesn't matter what kind of health care we have if we're sick people."
Fannin is one of the three people behind Eat Right Racine (http://eatrightracine.org). She has been involved in the recently started local effort to encourage people to grow their own food, but her objective is to change our eating habits. Although she is studying through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York City to become a holistic health counselor, what started her thinking about eating habits was volunteering at Gifford Elementary School where her daughter is a student.
What she noticed was an absence of vegetables, especially greens like spinach. Her first thought was to advocate for a change in the school menus. "Well what I did was, after observing school lunches, I noticed that what kids bring from home was just as bad."
The goal of her group now is to bring about general change in eating habits, but Fannin said she doesn't want to preach, nor to offend people.
"This is a really sensitive subject to some people. You know what? I guess it is to me too," she said. "… I don't know it all either. I'm still learning."
People wouldn't send their children to school with a half-cup of sugar for lunch, she said. "I've been guilty of this myself. I don't think they understand how much sugar is in our food."
More with less
Experts also won't condemn school lunch programs.
"In general I would say things are improving compared to 10 years ago, but there's a lot more improvement that needs to be done in this country if we really want children to be eating healthy and reduce childhood obesity," said Mary Story, a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota.
Although there are still some problems, the fat content of foods has been decreasing steadily in school lunch programs, she said. More than 85 percent of school meals meet standards for vitamins A and C, calcium and iron, all critical nutrients for the growth and development of children.
The real issue, Story said, is the amount of processed food in school meals. "Do kids really need chicken nuggets and french fries every day?"
There is a need for more wholesome foods, more fresh vegetables and whole grains, she said. "And that's kind of an American issue."
It is, experts said, a matter of the food habits we have formed: open campuses which allow students to patronize fast food establishments, sweetened drinks such as chocolate milk which accustom children to that taste and encourages them to pick sweetened food, the availability of food at any time. In many ways, it all depends on money.
"Most schools are just really struggling to be able to provide meals that meet these guidelines with the amount of money they have to work with," said Susan Nitzke, a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
One way to do that is to minimize the amount of times food is handled, she said, which leads to a reliance on large companies to supply ingredients. In Madison there are parent volunteers from a community group (broadly part of the Slow Food movement) who process locally grown fruits and vegetables for use in school meals or snacks.
"We'd like to see more whole grains, more fruits and vegetables." said Andrea Giancoli, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and the dietician for the 650,000 student Los Angeles School District. "We're trying to feed them on 57 cents."
That's how much her district devotes to the food which ends up on th e plate, not including the cost of milk.
An additional goal of school lunch programs is to educate, Giancoli said. "The kids that come into the cafeteria and eat the school lunch, studies show that they have healthier diets than kids that don't."
All school districts are required by federal law to have a wellness policy, Giancoli said. Unfortunately, that mandate doesn't have many teeth, she said, so what any school district has varies widely from district to district and school to school. It all depends on how committed local leadership is.
That may change, along with school lunch dietary guidelines, Giancoli said, because the Child Nutrition Act which created the school lunch program is due for reauthorization by Congress this year. That will almost certainly entail a change in dietary guidelines.
Unified choices
"But they're coming from politicians so we know they'll be well thought out," said Dan Blimling, who then laughed heartily.
Blimling thoroughly understands how our food culture affects schools. He is the resident district manager for Chartwells, which is the food service contractor for the Racine Unified School District.
Today's students are much more sophisticated and savvy consumers, he said. They have learned how to eat and what to eat from their homes and from the restaurants where their parents have taken them.
"We've got to put things on the plate that kids are going to eat," he said. "There's no nutrition from food that goes in the garbage can."
When he visits schools, he likes to look at the table with children who have brought their own lunches. "I saw one kid one day who packed nine Oreo cookies, potato chips and a juice box."
Such lunches often are the result of a child packing his own food because a parent hasn't, said Lori Fredrickson, the Chartwells dietician who works in Racine with Blimling.
But even chocolate milk has its upside. Chartwells offers it because of its content of vitamin D and calcium, Blimling said, and calcium intake is an issue for children.
The approximately 2 teaspoons of sugar in a serving of milk was a trade-off, Fredrickson said. "We eliminated sugar in other areas to compensate for that decision."
That is not to say school food has not been changing. Almost all desserts have been eliminated from schools, and the only beverages sold by Chartwells are water and fruit juice that is 100 percent fruit juice. Serving lines don't provide additional salt. School kitchens steam many vegetables, Blimling said, but in contrast to what used to be done they are not doused with melted butter before being put out on the serving line.
The company has also started a program to offer food with more fiber, less fat and less sodium. In part that is a step to be ready for the new school lunch guidelines, Fredrickson said, which are expected to limit calories and set a requirement for fiber. Tastes change slowly, she said, so the company is starting to adjust its food now.
Blimling said he was amazed that Los Angeles could feed a student for 57 cents. Unified pays a flat $2.28 per meal that must cover all costs, including food, labor and insurance. Blimling said Chartwells spends about 75 cents a student on its food.
And although the idea of using locally or regionally grown food is good, Blimling said, federal food safety guidelines make that impractical.
"I love to go to the farmers market and get fresh stuff for me at home." But from a school food service view, he said, one doesn't know how food was grown, what pesticides may have been used, what fertilizers were used.
And schools serve a population that is vulnerable to food-borne diseases, Fredrickson said.
The greatest challenge as a dietician, she said, is exposing children to the variety of fruits and vegetables which exist.
Although food service is there to support schools, Blimling said, education like that plays a part. "People need to be taught what to eat. There needs to be a conscious decision about what we put in our mouths."
Food events
Eat Right Racine plans to hold a healthy food event from 6 to 8 p.m. July 22 at Monument Square in Racine. There will be demonstrations, samples of fresh food, educational booths and other offerings.
The group meets on the first Thursday of each month from 6:30 to about 7:45 p.m. The locations vary, so check the group's Web site at: http://eatrightracine.org