Wellness moves to front of lunch line

SANDPOINT — Bonner County’s largest restaurant chain will serve nearly 400,000 meals this year. That equates to several hundred cases of fresh fruit, even more boxes of lettuce and fresh vegetables and more than 3.2 million fluid ounces of milk, for a total of 122 tons of food prepared and served to its customers.

Those customers, by the way, just happen to be among the pickiest eaters on the planet — American school kids in grades K-12.

“We have 11 restaurants between all of our kitchens in the district,” said Bobbie Hass, director of child nutrition for the Lake Pend Oreille School District. “I don’t think people realize the magnitude.

“I mean, how many restaurants can say they’ve had 18 health inspections at 11 different locations and not had a single finding?”

An army, Napoleon said, marches on its stomach. Students march to class in much the same way, but these days, the menu items they find in the school cafeteria are a world apart from what their parents were being served. For one thing, there are many more options available today.

In LPOSD kitchens over the past few years, those options have been reviewed, reevaluated and continually revamped to wring out more fat and ratchet down the calorie count.

“I’ve been with the district for 15 years and it’s amazing the amount of changes I’ve seen in that time,” Hass said.

Among the biggest has been the total elimination of trans-fat in school foods. The district serves no pre-fried items at all and deep-frying is also a thing of the past.

“I remember when we took the deep fryer out of Sandpoint High School two years ago,” the director said. “That was hard for the kids, because they loved those deep-fried French fries.”

Students can still find fries on the menu, but they now are baked and sometimes come in a bright orange tint when sweet potato fries are substituted for the common spud variety.

Nothing has escaped this nutritional reinvention. Even long-standing school lunch traditions such as the “cheese zombie” — a gooey favorite if ever there was one — has been dragged to the party. In its heyday, the “zombie” was made by baking ham, cheese and other goodies right into the middle of a loaf of white bread. When sliced, the results were outrageously tasty. From the standpoint of fat, sodium and calorie intake, however, they were just plain outrageous.

A single serving of the original “cheese zombie” delivered almost 900 calories. The new version weighs in at about 300.

There’s also a slimmed-down version of the classic corn dog, which tips the scales at between 450-500 calories when it’s a fatty frankfurter dipped in a soup of white flour and corn meal and then deep-fried, but comes in at a fraction of that measure when it’s the turkey dog in a whole grain coating version that’s now baked in LPOSD kitchens.

“We’ve done the same thing with our famous cinnamon rolls,” Hass said. “They’re now whole grain and we use apple sauce instead of butter, so they have about 60 fewer calories with much less fat and sugar.”

At the elementary and middle school levels, students have a daily choice of three entrees, with the added option of ordering a chef’s salad or sandwich instead. Side dishes, fresh fruit and fresh vegetables are always served and milk is a part of every meal.

In high school, particularly at SHS, the number of choices grows considerably. In the main cafeteria, students can choose from daily entrees or put lunch together from the “build your own sub” station or fruit, veggie, soup and salad bars.

A la cart selections are available in the SHS commons from vendors such as Domino’s Pizza and Arby’s, both of which worked with Hass to incorporate changes like whole grain crust and buns, as well as smaller portion sizes, into what they are allowed to offer for sale at the school.

These nutritional changes — all part of the LPOSD wellness policy adopted in 2007 and further revised last year — didn’t come without a struggle, according to the nutrition program director. Besides the fracas over French fries, when high school students first encountered new menu items like whole grain pasta or Chinese and Japanese rice bowl entrees featuring brown rice, they balked.

Rice, they told the kitchen staff was supposed to be white. And noodles, while admittedly indistinct in coloring, were definitely not meant to be brown.

“We have so many healthy options now that it makes it difficult for us to compete, because the high school kids can leave and get lunch somewhere else,” Hass said. “After we implemented these changes, we lost $10,000 in a la cart sales at SHS alone.”

The initial shock wasn’t limited to upper grades, as elementary students, too, faced a learning curve.

“When we first offered kiwi, a lot of the elementary kids didn’t even know what it was,” said Hass.

Grabbing kids’ attention in the primary grades has become a keystone of the nutrition program. LPOSD Physical Education Department Chair Pam Lippi leads a district-wide elementary level effort that now includes ongoing education about nutrition, food groups and healthy eating habits into the PE curriculum. Hass, meanwhile, has been sending her “Nutrition Nuggets” newsletter home to make sure parents get the message about exercise and eating wisely.

“I’m proud of the positive changes we’ve made to help curb childhood obesity and help kids understand the importance of lifelong healthy eating choices,” the nutrition program director said. “And I think parents should be proud, too.”