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Chicago Removes "Treats" from School Menus

by: euclidarms

Sat Mar 27, 2010 at 07:01:01 AM PDT

( - promoted by Jill Richardson)

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

The Chicago Tribune reports today that schools there are undertaking a major revamping of menus, removing sugary foods such as Pop- Tarts and embracing Institute of Medicine recommendations that call for more vegetables and whole grains.

Chicago public schools use the same food service provider--Chartwells--as the District of Columbia, where Pop-Tarts and candied cereals are routinely served for breakfast. The Chicago schools will reduce serving nachos to just once a week in high school, and once a month in elementary schools. According to the Tribune, sweet packaged desserts will also be reduced to weekly treats. Doughnuts and Pop-Tarts will be eliminated entirely.

The new guidelines state that "no items served may contain 'dessert of candy type' ingredients or flavors such as chocolate etc." Apparently that will not affect flavored milk, such as the chocolate and strawberry milk that are ubiquitous in D.C. school cafeterias. Another exception to the rule is Chocolate Mini-Wheats cereal--also served here in the District--because it is high in fiber. The new Chicago rules require that all breakfast cereals contain no more than five grams of sugar unless they provide three or more grams of fiber.

The Tribune further reports that the new rules "include meal planning guidelines that generally meet Institute of Medicine recommendations developed last year at the request of the U.S. Department of Agriculture" that call for increased servings of vegetables and whole grains. But it was unclear whether the Chicago approach included the IOM's call for increased portion sizes of vegetables, which has been rejected by drafters of "Healthy Schools" legislation pending before the D.C. Council because school officials say they can't guarantee kids will eat the vegetables they make and not throw them in the trash.

The Tribune reporter who wrote the story, Monica Eng, said in an e-mail she believes the schools are specifically targeting nachos, cookies, Pop-Tart and doughnuts "because of specific page one stories I wrote singling them out." Eng has been nominated for a James Beard award for a story she wrote about nachos served daily in Chicago schools.

euclidarms :: Chicago Removes "Treats" from School Menus

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Chicago Removes "Treats" from School Menus | 4 comments

Links (4.00 / 1)

The Slow Cook version of this item contains a link to the ChiTrib article.

Chicago school officials plan to ditch doughnuts, Pop-Tarts

The Eng article about nachos:

Nachos for lunch? Yes, every day
By Monica Eng
Tribune reporter
June 11, 2009

I'll look for other Eng articles.

by: count @ Sat Mar 27, 2010 at 23:43:00 PM UTC

by: you @ soon

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Ignorance (4.00 / 1)

From Eng's nacho article,

About 100,000 Chicago public high school students, 80 percent of whom qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, can choose nachos as an entree every day. That idea shocked three national school lunch policy experts who were under the impression nachos were restricted to a la carte programs that sell food outside the lunchroom.

Think about that. All the coalitions, policy groups, bloggers, and advocates who are working so diligently to spread information and effect improvements, and still three people who should know better have no idea what happens in our school cafeterias. I can't even get angry about that. It's heartbreaking, and it's a national problem. Most of us don't know enough about the situation. I'm trying to learn, but it isn't easy. The USDA website harbors a lot of information, for example, but finding it is difficult, at least for me.

Then there are additional obstacles, like this:

The district's top official in charge of school lunches, Louise Esaian, never spoke with the Tribune by phone despite weeks of requests.

Sigh. The bunker mentality.

Eng's June 2009 article closed with this:

The Tribune paid a final lunchroom visit Wednesday to Von Steuben High School, where dozens of kids took foam trays loaded with nachos, fries, chocolate milk and canned fruit. It's the meal freshman Ellyanne Celino said she eats five days a week. "I just like nachos in general," she said.
Lunch room manager Patty Liberty grimaced. Next year, she pointed out, Von Steuben will launch a pilot lunch program whose prospective menu features panini, tossed salads and dressings "using real olive oil every day."
But that pioneering menu also includes a familiar daily offering:
Nachos.

Eng also wrote a good article about waste.

Schools' lunch waste piles up
Every day, kids in the Chicago Public Schools district throw out nearly a quarter of a million lunch and breakfast trays made of polystyrene foam. That's more than 1 million a week, about 5 million a month. And those trays are just the start of a river of trash from school meals that ends up in landfills
...
The Chicago district, which would not allow the Tribune to visit lunchrooms for this article, does offer some recycling bins for bottles and cans that come from outside the school food program.
...
The district also hired Suzanne Carlson in 2007 to be its environmental program manager. Her plans include a five-school pilot composting program to begin soon. But no districtwide plans for reducing tray waste are on the table at Chicago Public Schools, which pays about $5 million a year in waste-hauling fees.
...
...
Once in their seats, they fiddled with milk cartons, tore open cereal containers and sipped from their juice cups. But most never got to the waxy apples or unpeeled oranges on their trays.
About 10 minutes later, a lunchroom worker commanded them to toss the rest of their food and get to class.
"If you take any food out of this room," she threatened, "they will stop the whole breakfast program."
Dutifully, the children dumped piles of untouched fruit into plastic bins and walked to class.
...
The principal said a district health rule prohibits the taking of food from the lunchroom. He seemed sad about it but was serious about following rules. Several other district faculty and staff members have mentioned the perceived rule to me. Some have said they feared punishment for trying to save food.
In recent months at district schools, I've watched unopened boxes of cereal, milk, yogurt, fruit and juice go right into the trash.
But district spokesman Frank Shuftan said the Chicago schools have "no rule that restricts the collection of unopened, uneaten food before it goes in the garbage." He said the district has "instructed lunchroom staff that it is permissible for unbitten, uneaten fruit to be removed from the cafeteria."
It's true that some schools don't want food in the classroom, so students wanting to save food or take it home should be sure to store it wherever packed lunches are allowed to go.

Hmm. That probably exceeds fair use guidelines. Sorry, ChiTrib.

by: count @ Sun Mar 28, 2010 at 01:37:44 AM UTC

by: you @ soon

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This Chicago Trib article is an excellent example (4.00 / 1)

as to why I like local control. If the parents of those kids knew what was going on in that cafeteria and that a whole pile of money they're paying out in taxes was going to purchase good, healthy food and then to pay the disposal service to haul it out to a landfill (uneaten), do you think that all of them would take that laying down?

Some would, but others would stand up and raise hell until the situation was fixed. More local control means more local involvement. If people are involved things are less likely to go sideways, like a shcool lunch program which you and I are paying for, through our federal taxes, allowing kids to have nachos for lunch every day. That's what federal control gets you.

It also encourages people to be complacent. Don't bother getting involved (which is work and takes time away from relaxation, etc.). Big daddy will take care of it for you.

Big daddy taking care of it for us gets us serving nachos for lunch.

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

by: JoanneRigutto @ Sun Mar 28, 2010 at 14:21:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I don't understand this. (0.00 / 0)

I think you need to develop this explanation more fully. I don't understand it as is. As in the West Virginia case, the situation portrayed in the ChiTrib article is the result of local control. Local control created the mess, and local control has begun to take small steps to ameliorate it, right?

I don't see how any of that can be attributed to federal control. On the basis of those articles, why wouldn't you espouse the position that federal oversight has been too lax?

by: count @ Sun Mar 28, 2010 at 14:57:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]