Hi all!
I’m writing this as a follow-up to my first blog about my experience with the Hartford School Food Services Department. It barely touches everything that I’d like to share with you, but I suppose you’ll just have to tune into my Practicum Presentation on Wednesday, December 14th.
Picking up from where I left off….
One of my first steps was to gather information that outlined the issues of poor nutrition and obesity of Hartford’s children. The Director and I decided there to be a statement of rationale that explained why we were doing the project and what exactly we were doing. We gathered as many statistics that we could to outline the issue. These included the following;
– Connecticut childhood obesity rates and higher among Hispanics (36.3%; 18.4% overweight, 17.9% obese) and non-Hispanic black teens (32.0%; 16.6% overweight, 15.4% obese), compared to Non-Hispanic white teens (22.9%); 13.7% overweight. 9.2% obese).
– Approximately 50% of Hartford’s 11 year old children are “at risk”, “obese”, or
“extremely obese” and 30% of Hartford’s 2 year old children are in the same categories
Community Food Show?
The Director and I were able to arrange for a meeting with a representative from the food vendor, Culinary Standards. He shared with us information on how one of his clients, Brownsville Independent School District organizes and promotes their annual “Kool Foods for Kool Schools: Food Show. It was after reviewing their Vendor Registration Form, Floor plan, agenda, and promotional materials, and hearing the vendor’s suggestions we decided we had to do our “homework” so the district could be ready for such an event.
Controlled Tasting
After meetings with other staff in the central office, kitchen managers who see what the children take, and evaluating production records, we decided if we should focus our energy on the food least taken or consumed in the district. We identified vegetables (particularly orange and dark green), fruit, and high protein vegetarian items for controlled taste tests. By starting with these priority types of food we’re able to start incorporating new menu items before the community food show in the spring.
In mid-October I attended the School Nutrition Association of Connecticut Fall Food Show to see, taste, and ask questions from food manufactures about new school foods on the market. It was interesting to see the vendor try to vie for the largest district in Connecticut’s time and ear. It was pretty well known that if the district decided to take on one of their product, there were would a lot of business and therefore, revenue for the company. It was at the moment that I really began to see the how running a food service department, with the ultimate goal of feeding kids, still needs to meet their bottom-line. And with the amount of money the federal government reimburses these programs, it takes a skilled and creative director to provide a diverse menu of fresh and healthy foods that (and this is key) the students will actually eat.
Here is an example of one menu item we’ll be tasting with hope of it becoming a regular and popular menu item.
Basic American Foods’s New Sweet Potato Mashed, Side with Popularity
Not only is it an orange vegetable, a focus of the new Dietary Guidelines, but it’s easily prepared and suitable for the fast paced school food kitchen and it a good source of fiber with 100% of the daily value of vitamin A.
First thing was first in our challenge to do just this; we have to get students and kitchen staff acclimated to the practice of trying and tasting new foods. We thought it was best to keep them as controlled as possible so we can collect information on how best the tasting work i.e. how many staff does it take? Which tasting forms work best for what ages of students? Does nutritional messaging while tasting increase the likelihood to try something new? Or how does adult modeling influence tasting outcome?
These taste testings occurred in November during after school programming when students are participating in Hartford’s new Supper program. More on that on December 14th!