A Welcome Goodbye to Animal Crackers at Breakfast?

When I was once asked by Slow Food USA to explain why I started my daily blog about kids and food, The Lunch Tray, I realized that a packet of animal crackers played no small part in the decision.

I was attending my very first HISD Food Services Parent Advisory Committee meeting in February 2010, just as the First Class Breakfast program was being fully rolled out across the district at the direction of Superintendent Terry Grier.  There was a lot of concern among parents at the meeting (and throughout HISD) about some of the items on that initial breakfast menu, including brightly hued Trix yogurt, shrink-wrapped, processed maple-flavored waffles, and packets of animal crackers.

When I asked HISD’s then-head dietician about the animal crackers specifically, she said they were added to the menu to meet the USDA’s iron requirements for school breakfasts (via the fortification of the flour) as well as its high calorie requirements (via the sugar).  I was so appalled by a system (called the “nutrient standard” method of meal planning) that would lead to this bizarre result that I began to learn as much as I could about the federal school meal program.  Eventually I wanted to share that knowledge via a blog and The Lunch Tray was born.

When I revisited the animal cracker issue on The Lunch Tray back in August, 2010, I was told by the district, to my relief, that they were going to be phased out of HISD’s breakfast program in the fall of last year.  (And, indeed, if you look at the current published HISD breakfast menus – here, here and here– animal crackers are nowhere to be found.)

But a few days ago my daughter happened to mention seeing them every day at breakfast in her middle school and she brought home a packet to show me.  Concerned, I contacted Brian Giles, Senior Administrator of Food Services, to find out what was going on.  He wrote:

Our commitment was to eliminate the fortified crackers from the elementary breakfast menu.  That has definitely happened.  The item is approved for a la carte during the lunch period. . . .

Due to higher calorie and iron requirements for middle school age groups, the item is still offered as part of the breakfast menu at that level.

Regarding the calorie/iron conundrum, here are some solutions we have been working on:

1)  We will be moving from “nutrient standard” menu planning to “food based” menu planning next year.  This menu planning approach has lower, more realistic calorie standards.  It will also allow us to increase the variety of food groups offered on a given menu.  Because of lower calorie requirements, we could eliminate the menu need for items like the animal crackers (which are a good source of iron and calories).

2)  In our current “Select Items” bid, we are seeking additional breakfast items that are high in iron and meet calorie requirements.  Bid responses will be tabulated in December and we could see these new items on menus as early as February, replacing the need for a cracker item.

When I asked Brian why animal crackers were being served without appearing on the middle school menu, he wrote:

I checked the online menus and it looks like we have a typo that says “cereal assortment” every day.  We will change the online menu so it is accurate.

When I pressed him to find out how long the typo had been appearing, he added:

As far as we can tell, the typo stretches back to last spring’s online menus.  Certainly no intention to mislead the public.  It was simply a data entry error in the process between menu creation and menu publication that we didn’t catch.  Thanks a lot for bringing it to my attention.

I take Brian at his word, of course, and mistakes can happen to anyone.  But it disturbs me that any food item (and particularly one that had been the subject of some controversy) was being served to students for so long without the knowledge of HISD parents.

At any rate, I personally will be very pleased when our schools are no longer offering what are, in the end, cookies, to HISD middle schoolers every morning.  Nutrition aside (these particular animal crackers do contain some whole grain), this seems like a terrible message to be sending our students about sound food choices, particularly in an age of rampant childhood obesity.

I’ll keep you posted here.
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A Follow-Up to the Infamous “Cheetos-and-Nacho-Sauce” Photo

In my first post on this blog I shared a rather shocking photo of one child’s recent “lunch” in an HISD cafeteria: bright red, baked Flaming Hot Cheetos doused with nacho cheese sauce.  I didn’t want to kick off The Spork Report on such a negative note, but that photo conveyed better than any words my longstanding concern about some of the foods sold by HISD to our kids.

So I decided to go ahead and post the photo in an effort to start a conversation.  And in the past three weeks there has been a lot of discussion of those now-infamous red Cheetos — in the blogosphere, in private emails to me, and even among some HISD school officials.  It seemed worthwhile, therefore, to loop back to clarify some points which may be causing confusion and to raise some additional questions for your consideration.

Was that concoction actually an entree served by HISD?  

HISD, mercifully, is not putting on its menu a mixture of Cheetos and melted cheese sauce and calling it lunch.  While I thought I made this clear in the body of my post, a few readers seemed confused, so let me reiterate:  the chips and nacho sauce in the photo were not offered to kids on the lunch line, but were instead purchased separately by the child from the district’s “a la carte” menu and mixed together by him/her at the table.

What do you mean by “a la carte” foods?

A la carte foods are items sold by the district entirely apart from (and in actual competition with) the federally subsidized school meal as a money-making venture.  You can see a complete list of what HISD sells a la carte here, along with some 2010-11 nutritional information here.

Are there any nutritional standards for the a la carte foods sold by HISD?

HISD Food Services has voluntarily adopted for its a la carte foods the nutritional standards imposed on schools meeting the Healthier U.S. Schools Challenge.  Under these guidelines, items like the Baked Flaming Hot Cheetos in the photo are acceptable.

So, if HISD is already meeting nutritional standards, what’s your problem?

Well, first let’s take a closer look at some of these a la carte foods.  In addition to the Baked Flaming Hot Cheetos, our district also makes available to our kids items like Froot Loops, Corn Pops, Rice Krispies treats, chili cheese dogs, fried chicken sandwiches, pizza slices, beef taco nachos, Frito pie, four varieties of Doritos, quarter pound cheeseburgers, and sliders.  To meet the aforementioned nutritional guidelines, these foods generally have to be doctored in some way, like baking the Cheetos and Doritos instead of frying them or reducing portion size.  But while these foods might be “less bad” for you, you’d be hard-pressed to find a dietician or health professional who would recommend them as a regular part of a growing child’s diet.

More important, however, is the fact that the vast majority of HISD students are unaware of these nutritional modifications; to our children, there’s little difference between HISD’s beef taco nachos (which, I believe, use reduced-fat cheese and baked chips) and the beef taco nachos they get off campus (except for the fact that the latter may taste better).   The result?  Our schools are implicitly telling kids that it’s perfectly OK to eat these sorts of “carnival foods” every single day — even in an era in which one in three children are already overweight or obese — and many of our students are doing just that.

But nutritional considerations are not my only objection to our a la carte food.  Here are a few more issues to consider, topics I hope to discuss in more detail in future Spork Report posts:

• Having an extensive a la carte menu like HISD’s undermines participation in the federal school meal program, a program in which taxpayers invested almost $11 billion last year and which, statistically, provides kids with even better nutrition than lunches packed from home.

• Selling a la carte items like burgers and pizza creates an economic incentive to offer the same types of foods on the federally reimbursable menu.  Just take a look at HISD’s high school menu and you’ll see what I mean:  a monotonous array of pizza, burgers, and mostly fried-item sandwiches, day after day after day.

• Parents often have little or no oversight over their children’s a la carte purchases and, indeed, many are shocked when they visit a school cafeteria and see the foods being made available to their children.

• The sale of a la carte foods like the ones described above conflicts markedly with any nutrition education our children may receive as part of the school curriculum.  The school talks the talk in the classroom but walks an entirely different walk in the cafeteria.

• Finally, and perhaps most importantly, offering two separate options for school food – the federal school meal program and an a la carte menu — has been shown to create painful stigma among kids who must, for financial reasons, rely on the school meal.  (Indeed, it’s well documented that some of these children will choose to go hungry rather than be seen buying the “uncool” federal meal.)  In a district like ours, in which over 80% of our students qualify for free or reduced price lunch, this is a matter of real concern.

So, is there any alternative to selling a la carte foods?

Yes.  Some districts (and some states) have simply done away with a la carte altogether.  San Francisco USD (which offers no a la carte food in its cafeterias) imposes a “no empty calories” standard to food sold in vending machines, so that “slightly less bad for you” junk food like the Baked Flaming Hot Cheetos simply can’t be sold.

There may well be a negative financial impact to discontinuing the sale of a la carte junk foods.  In SFUSD, for example, the school board has in the past contributed funds to cover a food services shortfall; in an era of steep budget cuts, that’s a hard pill to swallow.  But to turn the question around, we have to ask ourselves:  is it ever OK to raise revenue at the expense of our children’s health?

In the end, what is HISD’s “food philosophy?”

Ultimately, the issue of a la carte touches on the larger philosophical question of how we want to feed the children in our district,* both in the a la carte line and in the reimbursable meal line.   Are we content to continue to offer the “doctored junk foods” that are popular with kids but which may contribute to obesity now — and which seem very likely to engender lifelong poor eating habits?

HISD Food Services, in recently adopting a mission statement proclaiming its desire to become “a leader in child nutrition and wellness by providing the highest level of nutrition possible on our campuses,” seems to want to do better.  And at the elementary level (where much less a la carte food is sold), we’re already seeing promising movement in the right direction, including more whole grain offerings, more fresh fruit, the introduction of salad bars and a more varied menu.  (More on all of that to come in future Spork Report posts.)

The question is whether the district is willing to do right by our middle and high school students as well.  Is it willing to greatly improve the a la carte menu — or even ditch it altogether?  Are we willing to take a chance that even older students might eat something other than a burger or a slice of pizza?  Or are we writing these older kids off as a lost cause?

And finally, a word to HISD Food Services

As soon as I posted the Cheetos-and-nacho-sauce photo three weeks ago, I feared I’d dealt an unfair blow to the many well-meaning, talented and committed school food professionals working in our district.  Through my membership on the HISD Food Services Parent Advisory Committee, I’ve gotten to know some of these men and women over the last year and a half, and I recognize the significant hurdles they face in trying to feed over 200,000 kids a day, many from impoverished backgrounds, on a limited budget and under strict governmental regulations.

One child’s Cheetos-and-nacho-sauce lunch is hardly representative of every meal served in our district, or even the majority of HISD meals, and it was never my intent to imply otherwise.  But it is my goal to reach the day when no child in HISD can call that utterly non-nutritive concoction “lunch” and be able to say that the district itself provided him or her with the means to do so.

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*Some Spork Report readers have taken issue with the very notion of the federal government being in the business of feeding children, believing this to be solely a parental responsibility.  My view is this:  the National School Lunch Program has been in existence since the 1940′s and it isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future.  So rather than getting into “Nanny State” debates about the proper role of government, my focus on this blog will always be purely pragmatic; if the school lunch program is here to stay, let’s talk about how to make it better.