The Salad Bar Story that Wasn't

Do these beans look appetizing to you?

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

I had meant to end another year in school food on an up note with a report about the salad bars being installed in some D.C. schools. A few of the 128 schools in the system now have salad bars, thanks to grant programs like the one Ann Cooper was running last year in partnership with Whole Foods. That has since turned into a much more substantial effort with the White House, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and produce growers called Let's Move Salad Bars to Schools.

I took the subway to an elementary school just a few blocks from the capitol dome expecting to take photos of a salad bar in action. But when I arrived, the salad bar was completely empty. I was told that no produce had been delivered that day. Subsequently I learned that being the last week of school, Chartwells to cut down on food waste had not ordered produce for the salad bars.

What the kids were eating instead were hamburgers and canned green beans like the ones you see in the photo above. Or perhaps I should say what they were not eating were the green beans. I often wonder whether kids in other parts of town have the same vegetable-averse lunch habits as the ones at my daughter's school, located in a more affluent neighborhood. Maybe I should not be so gratified to learn that--yup--kids over here on Capitol Hill dislike green beans just as much as the kids in Glover Park.

I took a stroll around the cafeteria to confirm and did not see a single child eating the green beans. Too bad, since canned green beans are much more flavorful than the fresh variety. They just don't look as sharp as beans that have been barely cooked, then "shocked" in cold water to keep them bright green--the way Julia Child might cook them.

I think of this every time the matter of the USDA's proposed new meal guidelines come up and all those extra servings of green vegetables they call for. Will the kids eat them? Why would the kids eat them, if they're not eating them now?

As soon as school starts up again in the fall, I'll have a report on salad bars. Because from what I've seen in other school districts, salad bars do engage kids in making better meal choices--including, obviously, vegetables.

High School Lunch

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

I've been meeting lately with a small group of students at a D.C. high school in hopes of developing a journalism project that looks at food service and kids' eating habits. One thing that leaped out at me during our talks was the fact that most of the students do not bother eating breakfast at school even though it's free.

Why would kids turn down a free meal? With the help of their teacher, we've turned that into a survey the students in my group say they will administer to their friends to determine where and what kids are eating in the morning and what it is about breakfast at school that turns them off.

Having lived in the city for many years, I'm quite used to seeing kids walking to school with a bag of chips in one hand, a jumbo soda in the other. Convenience store dining is de rigeur in these parts.

Meanwhile, last week we had our first outing in the school cafeteria, a place my group seldom ventures. Why? Well, the subterranean feel of the place--absence of windows, low ceilings, exposed pipes--for one thing. And there doesn't seem to be any particular line or order around the steam table. It feels more like a mosh pit, with kids pressing together, jockeying for position.

The kids in my group would just as soon avoid the whole scene.

Here you see the canned green beans on display last Thursday. Does this look appetizing to you? Plus, there was no real sense of urgency behind the steam table. Getting served seemed to take forever while the food just sat there.

Here's what one kid's tray looked like. No surprise: these kids want pizza, just like kids everywhere. In high school, the students only have to take three of the five items offered to constitute a reimbursable meal for purposes of the federal school lunch program. That's called "offer versus serve," to cut down on waste.

Here's the other option: pasta with marinara sauce. I noticed the high schoolers were being served traditional spaghetti noodles, while the kids at my daughter's elementary school now get only "whole wheat" pasta. I wonder if there's a reason for that. Do high schoolers reject the whole wheat pasta, or did they simply not have any on hand on this particular day?

According to the student who chose this lunch, the beans were "the best part" of the meal. The pasta, he said, was cold. "I don't mean not hot," he elaborated. "I mean it's really cold."

This was my first experience with an a la carte line in D.C. schools. I photographed the signage, but could not lose the glare from the overhead fluorescent lights. Still you can see what's being offered pretty clearly on this price list.

No sodas, "V-8 Fusion," juice, baked chips, crackers. There's nothing terrible for sale here--no ice cream bars, corn dogs or flaming Cheetos. Notice they do sell chocolate cookies, but only on Fridays.

I have no idea what "Sunset Strips" refers to. The signage is pretty weak.

And here's a list of the "Crust n' Stuff" schedule for the week. How 1950s. Here's where you find pizza for sale three days a week, and a choice of two different chicken flat breads the other two days.

This is the same pizza and same flat bread served as entrees at my daughter's school.

Finally, I don't understand why this "a la carte merchandising guide," explaining how the food items are to be displayed and stored, is taped to the sneeze guard for students to see. The curling edges just add to an atmosphere of cheapness and neglect.

What's for Lunch: Tilapia!

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Look! Clean fish fillets being served in D.C. Schools!

This tilapia with a bit of Cajun seasoning makes a beautiful tray, no? Next to it is something else I that seems very new" "crunchy spinach," which means frozen spinach mixed with corn, bits of green pepper and sunflower seeds.

Who do you suppose cooked up that recipe?

Here's a what the kids saw when they came through the food line.

And here's what the "crunchy spinach" looked like in its hotel pan.

Okay, now for the bad news: As great as this meal looked, most of the kids in the lunchroom with my 11-year-old daughter didn't eat it.

To be more precise, I'd say about half of them at least tried the tilapia, and some of those were wolfing it down. "The ones who are eating it say it's the best thing ever," said one of the teachers who was monitoring things.

They also ate the canned pears and poked at the rice. But forget about those green beans and the "crunchy spinach." They wouldn't touch it. I tried the spinach. As much as I liked the concept, it was too cold. Almost frozen. Kids don't like spinach in general, and they seem to be really put off by exceptionally cold vegetables.

The tilapia fillets arrive frozen and are heated fairly easily. I wonder how the cost compares to other entrees the schools serve, especially the processed ones like those phony "grilled" chicken patties.

What's for Lunch: Pizza and Uneaten Veggies

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

I was intrigued by this "Sicilian cheese pizza with whole wheat crust"--so described by Chartwells at its menu website--because I had never seen a pizza so thin.

Turns out it was made with rectangular pieces of flat bread that conveniently fit precisely at the bottom of a stainless hotel pan. They're then slathered with tomato sauce and topped with mozzarella cheese.

The pizza, big slabs of it, did not look especially appetizing on the trays. But I tried it and it was quite good--if a bit limp. The "crust" was very soft. I wouldn't call it a crust at all.

What also fascinated me about this menu was the selection of sides. The green beans are pretty standard. But this celery? Really?

The Chartwells menu called for carrots with salad dressing, so I'm guessing the celery must have been a substitution for carrots that were never delivered.

The beans, delivered frozen, were steamed and seasoned with phony butter. I liked them, but the kids didn't touch them. They didn't touch the celery either. I took a walk around the cafeteria and didn't see a single child eating the beans or the celery. I may have missed a couple. But from what I could tell, all of these vegetables simply got dumped in the trash.

This is what most of the trays looked like after the kids finished their pizza.

What's for Lunch: No Seconds!

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

For some reason I can't get this photo to publish horizontally. But perhaps you can make out the items on this tray: spaghetti with meat balls, corn with carrots, green bean salad, a dinner roll and canned pears.

Even before the last of the kids had gone through the food line, others were lining up behind them for more food.

"No seconds! No seconds!" I heard the kitchen manager shouting.

Turns out what the kids were mainly after were the meat balls. I took a stroll around the lunch room and saw that most of the children had wolfed down the beef meatballs and sauce, and hardly touched anything else. Even the pasta was left mostly unmolested.

But their eagerness for more meatballs was thwarted. The lunch ladies were having none of that.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is proposing new, "healthier" nutrition guidelines that would cut way back on starchy vegetables like potatoes and corn--two of kids' favorite foods--and replace them with more "whole grains" like this pasta and the dinner roll.

Think that means less starch? Get a load of the pasta sandwich this girl is constructing. In fact, what passes for "whole grain" in school meals is actual "whole grain-rich," meaning manufacturers can label things "whole grain" as long as 51 percent of the ingredients qualify. The rest can be refined grain. And since that's cheaper than serving real grains, that's what kids see at school.

They get a little more fiber, and a lot more starch under the new guidelines--80 percent more "whole grain-rich" products at breakfast, for instance.

But what was most tragic about this particular meal was the wonderful green bean salad that went untouched by the kids. The beans arrive frozen. The cook took care to heat them in a steamer, then "shock" them in cold water to stop the cooking process. They were not cooked to death.

To finish the "salad," she tossed the beans with red onion and chopped tomato and dressed them with oil and vinegar. It truly was a lovely side-dish lovingly prepared. I ate a heap, while the kids threw theirs in the trash.

You can't just redesign school food without talking to the kids about it. When schools present food like this kids aren't used to, there needs to be adults in the cafeteria encouraging them to eat it.