Forced Fruits and Vegetables Not Best Option, Nutrition Groups Say

ROGERS -- National guidelines for school lunches this year require students take more fruits and vegetables, consume less salt and be offered only wheat bread and pasta, but not all students are buying the changes.

Chicken sandwiches and fries, burgers and fries and trays with egg rolls and steamed broccoli rolled off the lunch line at Rogers High School on Dec. 19, the last day of school before Christmas break.

There was a garden salad on the menu, mounds of veggies and options for fruit and milk. But the teenage boys eating lunch there wielded trays piled with wrapped sandwiches and ketchup. Some balanced an apple or fruit cup on top of their trays.

The fries on the lunch trays are a concession in the never-ending battle to get kids to eat vegetables, said Claudette Flowers, kitchen manager at Rogers High School.

Food service staff have packed mini vegetable trays and tried to market fruits and vegetables to students, Flowers said. When the new standards hit this fall every student was required to have a fruit or vegetable at lunch. Students were sent back into the lunch line from the register to get an apple or a salad. The line backed up and Flowers could hear a steady "thump" as the students discarded the food in the trash cans just outside the doors to the serving area.

The fries, although Flowers doesn't like serving them so often, count for a vegetable, according to federal standards. That helped to ease the lunch traffic.

Estefany Corleto, a junior at Rogers High School, said when she was sent back in line she didn't understand why and she barely had time to eat. She misses the fuego-flavored Takis she bought last year and she doesn't understand why she has to take food she doesn't plan to eat.

"It would just go straight to the trash sometimes," she said. "I think it was just a waste of food."

This is the challenge for school nutrition: meet federal guidelines, student taste expectations and stay in budget despite rising food costs.

"We're feeding trash cans a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables," said Robin Kinder, president of the Arkansas School Nutrition Association and assistant child nutrition director for Springdale Public Schools.

If high school students had the freedom to choose more fruits and veggies it could help, she said. Requiring a salad puts negative peer pressure on kids who might have taken it if they didn't have to, she said.

New lower sodium requirements have been especially difficult to fit, Kinder said. Low-sodium products haven't all been developed with kids' tastes in mind and need more research. She experimented with a low sodium mashed potato last year and watched as plate after plate went straight to the trash can.

"I have never seen children throw mashed potatoes away," she said.

She found a lower sodium version that children will accept, but this year was the first in a three-stage sodium reduction. In eight years the sodium levels of today will be cut almost in half. A kindergarten lunch will have 640 milligrams or less of sodium in the 2022-23 school year. Milk has 100 milligrams of naturally occurring sodium, Kinder said.

The School Nutrition Association won a small battle in freezing the sodium requirements this year, said Diane Pratt-Heavner, national spokeswoman. Of course, that doesn't change the sodium restrictions on snacks that were not phased in and affect a la cart offerings at school lunches. An entree can have 480 milligrams of sodium or less; a snack can have 200.

"A few of the rules just go too far too fast," Pratt-Heavner said.

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 set new standards for school lunches under the Department of Agriculture. Schools are reimbursed for free lunches and partially reimbursed for reduced-price lunches through the department.

The national group advocates for choice for students in what fruits and vegetables they put on their tray and hope for a freeze on the sodium changes to give manufactures more time for research and palates more time to change, she said. The national group also hopes it can convince legislators that they should be able to sell a second lunch to a hungry high school student without taking the lunch apart and counting salt in each component as they do now.

School programs will be able to request dropping the all-wheat requirement from their state under a new exemption. There was paperwork to drop whole wheat pasta this fall, but it was complex, Pratt-Heavner said.

A menu with biscuits and macaroni and cheese that aren't wheat would appeal to Rogers students, said Margie Bowers, food services director for Rogers Public Schools. She's found low-sodium ranch dressing and ketchup, but most students aren't used to eating whole grains, she said.

Back at the high school, students can't put a finger on what has changed about what they eat this year.

Alejandro Roman, a sophomore, said he usually picks a burger because there is a shorter line to get one.

Pablo Santay, a sophomore, picked up a sandwich. The food is different this year, he said

"Last year was a little bit better," Santay said.

Both said they thought there was a little less variety this year.

Some foods are out, Bowers said. Frito pie was a favorite, but it's been replaced by taco salad because the chips had too much sodium. The chips also weren't whole grain, Kinder said. Pickles are a childhood favorite, but she can only serve them with certain meals, she said.

In Rogers and Springdale the number of students who eat lunch at school isn't growing with enrollment. That has directors concerned for the future of lunch programs that run on tight margins.

"When the kids eat the meal we get paid for it. When the kids don't eat the meal we don't get paid," Bowers said.

Produce costs shot up along with the requirements of how much students need to consume, Bowers said. She and Kinder estimated there is about a 30-cent-per-meal increase for fruit at breakfast starting this year and a 10-cent increase for fruits and vegetables per lunch.

There was a 6-cent increase per lunch reimbursement from the USDA this year, Pratt-Heavner said. There was no increase in what the government contributes toward breakfast. Programs count on high numbers of children eating at school to keep themselves in the black. Traditional school lunch programs have run like a non-profit, Pratt-Heavner said, but that may be about to change.

When the School Nutrition Association surveyed members 18 percent thought they'd break even this year and half thought the costs to run the program would exceed revenue.

"It may be a year, it may be a couple years before these programs have to go to the school board and say 'Hey, we need you to bail out the program,'" Pratt-Heavner said.

School nutrition directors try to make food look and taste like children's favorites. The low-sodium all beef hot dog on a whole wheat bun is better for them, but costs more, Bowers said.

Students who aren't getting a healthy meal at school might not get one at all, especially those who come from homes in poverty, Pratt-Heavner said. Changing tastes and menus is possible, but requires adjustment, she said.

Flowers said she knows tastes have changed during the past 15 years, from when students turned up their noses at granola bars and she couldn't give yogurt away. Now the school can't order enough yogurt, she said. She's optimistic student tastes will change. Still Flowers worries after a friend told her that she had to buy more groceries because her children wouldn't eat the school lunch and came home hungry.

"I think we need a little more time," Kinder said.

Student Victor Morales, a junior at Rogers High School, said his dream would be a McDonald's inside the school, but that isn't going to happen. He will take an apple, but he keeps it for later, he said. Eating at school is better than being hungry.

"Food is food," Morales said.