Dieting

October 7, 2006
No More Mystery Meat
By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER
I miss the cookies and the fries,” Max Gold-Landzberg said.
Sitting in the cafeteria at John Jay High School in Cross River, N.Y., Max, 17, a senior, chomped on a roast beef and cheese sandwich on a whole wheat roll.
Last year he would have had the sandwich on a regular roll, Max said, but white-bread products are no longer sold in this Westchester County school, which has introduced some of the most sweeping menu changes in the region. Even the pizza now has a whole wheat crust. And instead of Max’s favorite potato chips, there is white cheddar popcorn.
“It’s a good idea because obesity and all that is a serious problem,” Max said. He wasn’t enticed, though, by the healthier choices on the hot food line like herb-roasted chicken and stir-fried veggies.
Neither were his table mates, who were grumbling about the new higher prices — to $3 from $1.75 for a hot lunch and to $4.75 from $3.95 for a roast beef sandwich — as well as the revamped menu.
Across the table from Max, Alex Magid, 16, who was brown-bagging it, polished off a salami, pepperoni and Parmesan sandwich on a white roll, a few Double Stuf Oreos and some pretzels, washed down with a Snapple Iced Tea.
Last year Alex bought lunch at school, at least sometimes. Now he brown-bags it daily. “I have loved the French fries ever since freshman year, and now they are gone for my senior year,” he said.
Faced with a new federal law requiring school districts to outline nutrition goals this year, schools across the region have been scrambling to eliminate trans fats, toss their deep fryers and reduce the overall sugar content in food, while still keeping their pickiest clients — the students — on board.
The federal law, which took effect on July 1, required public school districts around the country that receive government subsidies for meals to develop “wellness policies” outlining nutrition and exercise goals before classes began this fall. Connecticut has taken further steps by banning sugary drinks from cafeterias and vending machines in kindergarten to grade-12 school buildings. New Jersey will do the same by next fall, along with forbidding schools to sell anything that lists sugar in any form as a principal ingredient. New York has been slower to adopt such legislation, but some school districts, under pressure from parents to revamp their menus, are not waiting for state regulations.
In many lunchrooms, school food directors have taken up the challenge. French fries are baked, if they haven’t disappeared entirely. Vending machines are being restocked with bottled water and juice instead of Gatorade. Snacks like baked soy and fruit chips are replacing deep-fried potato chips. Soft pretzels are shrinking; frozen-fruit bars fill the Chipwich racks.
John Jay and other schools in the Katonah-Lewisboro district have gone so far as to substitute vegetable frittatas and whole wheat vegetable lasagna for hamburgers and French fries. John Jay’s cafeteria this year also eliminated processed foods, trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup, and stocked the salad bar with beans, nuts and low-fat dressings. (After trying to add tofu, however, the school had to drop it when it went uneaten.)
“The federal policy date gave us a goal post,” said Mary Ann Petrilena, a member of the district’s food committee, made up of teachers, administrators, parents and students. The committee sent out a districtwide survey last winter and received more than 2,200 responses.
“The feedback was overwhelmingly, ‘yes, the community would like to see healthier foods in the cafeteria, and yes, the community would be willing to pay more for healthier food,’ ” Ms. Petrilena said.
Few districts have done as much as Katonah-Lewisboro. Local school boards vary enormously in how they are interpreting the federal mandate, said Dr. Susan Rubin, founder of the Westchester Coalition for Better School Food.
“Some school districts have taken this to heart and made some significant changes, and other school districts have done nothing but a little window dressing,” Dr. Rubin said.
On Long Island, there are also wide variations, said Josephine Connolly-Schoonen, a registered dietitian and assistant clinical professor of family medicine at Stony Brook University, who is working with 93 schools to add substance to their wellness policies.
“Each school district develops its own policy; that is only a general statement,” Ms. Connolly-Schoonen said. The Heart Links program, financed by the New York State Health Department, helps districts make it work — for example, by suggesting that a school limit the amount of sugar in snacks to 15 grams per serving, about the amount in three Pepperidge Farm Double Chocolate Milano cookies.
Some districts are easing into the transition by offering baked chicken nuggets and turkey tacos in elementary and middle schools, but tiptoeing around rules in high schools, where students are more likely to balk.
At the high schools in Norwalk, Conn., where a new food service, Whitson’s Culinary Group, was hired to improve nutrition in line with a new policy passed by the school board last spring, themed food stations were introduced, with soup and salad, deli wraps, pizza, Mexican dishes and hot dishes like eggplant rollatini and double beef hot dogs with a side of Tater Tots. White bread is still on the menu, but being phased out.
In New Jersey, where school menus, starting next September, will be among the most tightly regulated in the nation.