Lunch-time blues

You can always get what you want. But, can you get what you need?

By Amrita Narayanan Bruce

Revisiting middle school can be harrowing. At least from a gastronomic perspective. Recently, for several weeks, I was a temporary office assistant at a Portland Middle school (for the purposes of this article, they’re all the same). When that longed-for lunch (half) hour provided a respite from stapling and photocopying, I faced the Portland Middle School lunch, armed with a couple of dollars and all the healthy eating information I did not have when I was in middle school. As I searched for a healthy vegetarian option in the dazzling flood-lit cafeteria I found myself quickly worn down to just finding something to eat.

After surveying the options on day one, still wide-eyed in the ways of modern middle-school lunches, I opted for a personal cheese pizza from the a la carte section. For dessert I got a yogurt, which turned out to have crunchy bits of chocolate in it (they did not carry the fruit on the bottom kind).

On day two, defeated by the other options, I also opted for a personal pizza.

On day three it began to dawn on me that, at the tender ages of 12 and 13, middle school kids are subjected daily to a test of willpower to which most adults would succumb without resistance.

Middle school isn’t really a place you associate with a lot of choice. Students need a pass to be in the hallway between classes. Their parents are called if they are even a minute or two late to school. Contraband — read: any item, book, or toy that is deemed inappropriate — is confiscated by the administration. Movies, books, any kind of

information is carefully regulated. And yet, when that 20-minute lunch bell rings, the yokes of authority are lifted and students can exercise their discriminative power to make choices about what to put inside themselves.

At a typical Portland Public middle school there are basically two lunch options. The first is the regular school meal, also called “Express Lunch,” which consists daily of an entrée, a serving of vegetables, a serving of fruit, a bread or cereal item, and milk. Students are required to select three out of the five lunch components.

“When a student selects three of the five lunch components that is a complete meal as far as the government is concerned,” says director of food services for Portland schools Bill Verrill. “As long as we meet these standards, we can get government reimbursement of the students’ lunch and the students can eat what they want.”

ýn day one of my brief affair with the middle school lunch, the express lunch was the following: ham and cheese on white bread (entrée), corn (vegetable), small container of canned pineapple (fruit), corn bread (bread/cereal item), and a quart of milk (your choice of lo-fat or chocolate). According to the three out of five rule, you could get corn, corn bread, and a quart of milk and pass the criteria for a healthy, complete meal.

On any given day, the lunch entrée could be a sandwich (roast beef, turkey, or BLT), a hamburger, a hot dog, or (once a week) pizza. Vegetarians are out of luck. In the words of the food server “we get vegetarian entrees but very, very rarely.” However, the express lunch is strictly optional for most students. If you’re not on the free lunch program, you don’t need to wait till the appointed weekly day to get your pizza — at the Portland middle school cafeteria you can have it your way, every day.

That’s because, in addition to the traditional school lunch, for the past few years the middle and high school students have been given a second option: an “a la carte” selection which allows students to buy items that always include pizza, along with, depending on the day, mozzarella sticks, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, hamburgers, and the uber-nutritious nachos and cheese. The a la carte section also offers a selection of short eats: Ritz-Bitz crackers, Rice Krispie Treats, Pop Tarts, chips, Oreos, and ice cream.

As for drinks, there is milk, bottled water, and that vital daily dosage of high fructose corn syrup in the form of Snapple brand iced tea and “juice drinks.” The Snapple juice drinks are the triumph of the food services department. “We never serve carbonated beverages at any of our schools,” says Bill Verrill, “if you want those, you’ll have to look elsewhere.” (Snapple juice drinks contains 46 grams of sugar in a single can serving. Coke has about a teaspoonful more at 52 grams, which begs the question: does the absence of carbon dioxide really deserve health points?)

Spoilt for choice? The kids seem to think so.

“I usually get chicken nuggets and ice-cream,” says Kara, a 13-year-old middle schooler. “What difference does it make? All the stuff available is greasy.”

To keep the record straight, it should be said that the a la carte section does offer one healthy option daily: a clear plastic container of a dozen carrot and celery sticks accompanied by a small tub of ranch dip. In terms of portion size alone, the veggie and dip option is enough to make any self-respecting healthy eater reach for the grease. Small and stacked in the fridge at the back, the veggies and dip doesn’t stand a chance against the chicken nuggets and mozzarella sticks.

Another student, Regina, 13, explains that the tiny serving of vegetables and dip just is not appealing, so she eats whatever else is available to fill up: “The food is often pretty gross, but I still usually get chicken nuggets and ice-cream or pizza”.

Two other students, Megan and Amanda, both 13, get the veggies and dip option almost every day because it is among the few that seem genuinely healthy. Both of them are “really tired of eating the same thing everyday,” and wish there were more fresh fruit options.

On day two, I surveyed the main meal of chicken fries, cheeseburger, potatoes, and cake before heading off for my a la carte pizza. In line, I saw the home economics teacher and took the opportunity to ask her how she reconciled her nutrition classes with what was served in the cafeteria.

“It’s very difficult,” was her only comment.

Here’s the kicker. Some kids don’t have even that veggie and dip option. Megan and Amanda are in seventh grade and have an early lunch so they actually have a chance to sample the fresh vegetables. However, since there is only a very limited quantity of veggies and dip (about 20 for a school of 600) prepared daily, students who have a late lunch miss out.

“All the veggies are gone before we get there because the eighth grade girls eat them all ’cause they are so concerned about their figures,” complains Nichelle, 13, who has a late lunch. “I don’t like the veggies that much anyway because they are really dry and icky,” she adds between bites of pizza.

What are the options for vegetarian students? “I get two or three requests every year for a vegetarian diet,” says Food Services Director Verrill, “but we don’t really have enough equipment to serve special diets,” he said. “We only accommodate special diets if the student has a disability or if the diet is necessary for the student to sustain life.”

ý student with a special dietary need such as vegetarian food must schedule a 504 — an appointment with the director of food services, the student’s doctor/nutritionist, and his or her parents — to prove disability or medical need. “I don’t know much about vegetarian diets,” says Verrill. “Some vegetarians eat chicken and fish, others have a hard time with just about anything.”

Verrill says he has very little freedom to decide what to serve for school lunches. “I always say that my choice only goes as far as the color of the menu,” he quips. All the meals for the Portland school district must be approved by a government recommended computer program called Nutrikids™. Verrill plans the meals several months in advance and inputs his meal ideas into the program. Nutrikids™ then calculates the calorie, fat, protein, and carbohydrate value for the suggested meal, compares them to the US Recommended Daily Allowance and then approves or rejects the meal suggestion.

While the USDA is notorious for overestimating fat and carbohydrate needs, perhaps contributing to the high teen obesity rate in America, what’s more surprising is that a la carte meals are free of the Nutrikids™ stranglehold. “There are no regulations or nutritional standards for the a la carte meals,” says Verrill. “We do what we can to keep them reasonably nutritious and low priced.”

A la carte is only an option for those who can afford it, however. The school services department is not doling out daily pizza rations to kids who are on a free meal plan. It’s a strictly “pay for your grease” system. Portland’s public schools are part ýf the national school lunch program. Of the almost 8000 students in the Portland school system, approximately 3000 receive free or reduced rate meals and are obliged to eat the regular (express) lunch. The rest are free to choose between the meal/express lunch option ($1.35) and the a la carte goodies that usually run a dollar or a dollar fifty per item.

For students who get the school lunch, all is not lost in the race to maximize junk food consumption. First there’s a good chance that the regular lunch entrée will be pizza, hamburger, or hot dogs, probably accompanied by french fries. Then, the three out of five rule helps them get rid of any two menu items that seem unappealing. If you’re a dyed-in-the wool greaser, dry iceberg lettuce would be the one you’d probably de-select. If you’re trying to eat healthy, or, god forbid, a vegetarian, that same dry iceberg becomes your entrée.

Obviously, once their food is on their tray, the students can eat as they please. “We’re not out policing,” says Verrill, explaining that the cafeteria’s job ends after they enforce the three out of five rule. Aficionados of the regular school lunch make the most of the cafeteria trash cans to dump their veggies so they can focus on eating their entrée before heading over to the a la carte section for an ice-cream.

“Most of the kids throw their salad away,” says Kara, 14. “Anyway I don’t think it’s very smart to let kids choose their foods. They should cut out the a la carte program. They are always saying how its costs so much money anyway. Then they could serve kids healthy food. And maybe they should station people at the trash cans to make sure kids don’t throw away their salad.”

“You’re asking a bunch of kids to choose between nachos and a bunch of veggies that look all dry, I don’t think they’re gonna choose that,” says André, 14. Yet the official argument for the current school lunch offering remains the children’s vote, so to speak.

“We’ve tried things like whole-wheat bread,” says Verrill, “but kids prefer white. They’re happier that way. We have 8000 students in the Portland school system, and we want as a many as possible to eat at school, so we offer as many foods as we think they will eat.”

Nearly five million American children aged six to 17 are overweight according to the national Center for Disease Control. While the school lunch certainly cannot be entirely blamed, it does represent an opportunity for improvement. At least in elementary and middle schools (high school students have the option of leaving campus for lunch), we have a captive audience whom we can educate first-hand about healthy eating by providing a range of healthy options instead of obliging them to sift through numerous unhealthy ones for a skimpy bowl of carrot sticks.

Health and better eating habits are major adult preoccupations today. As so many American adults re-structure their eating habits, toss out junk and refined foods, cut carbs and welcome cancer-fighting soy protein, how many are wishing they’d gotten a better start in healthy eating habits? If the middle school kids were provided with mainly healthy options, is it possible they’d choose to keep their lunch money in their pocket and go hungry rather than eat healthy food?

Just to illustrate the point of the captive audience, I paid a visit to the Cumberland County Jail to talk to their food service people. Despite the lack of choice (it is jail), I have to say their lunch sounded a lot healthier. Soup at almost every lunch, pasta salad with cucumbers, peppers, radishes and a vinaigrette dressing, baked beans, and oven browned potatoes were some of the options that sounded both healthy and appealing. A sample Friday afternoon meal (compare with day one at the school): tuna salad, carrot and raisin salad, two slices of bread, pineapple, and soda or milk.

“We work on a six-week meal planning cycle,” says Cumberland County Jail food services representative Bruce Harris, “and we serve pizza maybe four times in six weeks.” All the prison menus are approved by a nutritionist who works with the corrections department and ensures that the meals fall within the US RDA guidelines. There’s even a stipulation that 10 percent of the calories or less should come from refined sugar (missing from the school nutrition guidelines).

The prison meals cost, on average, 80 to 90 cents. Vegetarian diets are accommodated. Last October, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons declared that prisoners have a right to vegetarian and vegan meals, resulting in huge financial savings as some prison departments cut meat consumption by nearly 50 percent by substituting the healthier textured soy protein alternative for meat.

“We are happy to meet individuals’ religious or medical needs in terms of food,” says captain Jeffery Newton.

The Cumberland County Jail inmates have an average stay of about 10 days. That’s one pizza lunch, on average, compared with a possible 10 at any Portland Middle School. It’s enough to make a health-conscious vegetarian take to crime.

Amrita Naryanan Bruce can be reached at amritabruce@yahoo.com.