Audrey Rowe, meet Kveon Coats.
Rowe of Washington, D.C., is the administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Services and connoisseur of black beans and all foods that are healthy.
Kveon is a 10-year-old at Little Rock’s Martin Luther King Magnet Elementary School who, on Friday, proclaimed deep affection for McDonald’s hamburgers and an aversion to the uneaten chicken quesadilla, salsa and black beans on his school lunch plate.
Rowe visited the school to assess how pupils are responding to changes made to meals as the result of the federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.
Rowe waded in amongst the tightly placed lunchroom tables to speak quietly to Kveon, urging him to taste a bit of the quesadilla slice.
“Try it,” she urged, smiling. “You will make me a very happy lady.”
Kveon gamely if not enthusiastically took a small bite and another, and then nodded his head affirmatively.
Rowe took note of the untouched black beans on nearly all the children’s plates and announced: “I’m ready to go get a lunch. I love black beans.”
The Little Rock School District is among school systems nationwide that are upping the whole grains, vegetables and fruits served daily to its 19,000 school lunch consumers in an effort to comply with the federal law and encourage healthy eating habits.
Along with the entree, salsa and beans served Friday, there were good-looking yellow bananas and milk.
Menus earlier this week included barbecue chicken, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables and peaches one day, and chicken nuggets, homemade roll, romaine lettuce and tomato salad with diced pears and an oatmeal-raisin cookie on another.
The federal Healthy, Hunger-Free Act was designed to combat childhood obesity in part by placing limits on the calories children take in and by promoting fruits, vegetables, grains and lean meat.
But the changes in school menus triggered a host of complaints.
At a public hearing hosted by U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., in Jonesboro in October, area school district leaders said pupils were throwing away much of their food, students were going to their afternoon classes hungry and that the additional foods had caused a jump inschool district food-service budgets.
Lillie Bouie, food-service director for the Little Rock School District, said Friday that her department has received no push-back from parents and others about the menu changes.
But the move to larger servings of fruits, vegetables and foods with whole grains is costing the district “quite a bit more,” Bouie said.
Her staff is now seeking ways to rein in costs by developing new recipes that are healthy but also make greater use of lower-cost government commodities.
The line item for food in the Little Rock district’s Child Nutrition Department budget has increased more than a quarter of a million dollars since last school year and nearly $1 million since the 2010-11 school year. The district is projected to spend nearly $5.3 million on food for school meals this year, according to the department’s budget.
Rowe told reporters Friday that there will be no retreat from promoting healthy foods to school children.
“We’re introducing new foods - foods they may have not had before,” Rowe said. “It takes time to encourage them to just try it. Just a spoonful. Once they’ve had it, they will try it again.I know that through these kinds of experiences we are broadening the acceptance of new foods.”
One challenge to schools has been providing students with enough time to eat all of their school meals, Rowe said. It takes a few minutes more to chew the broccoli, greens and bananas they are getting, she said, and acknowledged that the food left at the end of the lunch period gets thrown away. She said adjustments are occurring.
“As I travel around the country, I’m seeing less and less plate waste,” she said. “Children are getting more and more used to the kinds of changes that we have made in the menus.”
Rowe’s success in getting Kveon and his classmates to dig into the black beans Friday was limited at best.But she welcomed the positive responses to fruits such as pineapple, bananas and apples.
“Just know how important we think you all are that we work really hard in Washington to try and make changes, and then I come here to see what you think about them,” Rowe told a table of children. “You guys have given me real encouragement by saying you like fruits and vegetables, and that you are going to work on the beans.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 21 on 12/02/2012