Lunch from Home: Pasta & Processed Stuff

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

At first glance this looks like a pretty healthy lunch--pasta in a thermos and a fresh apple. But on the side we have the processed stuff.

That four-ounce container of Yoplait Whips!--key lime pie-flavored yogurt "snack"--contains a whopping 21 grams of sugar, or five teaspoons worth in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. That's almost twice as much sugar, ounce-for-ounce, as in chocolate milk.

Then there's some kind of Special K bar. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good look at it and can't read the label from the photo. Maybe one of our readers recognizes it and can fill us in.

Need we repeat? Sometimes the lunch from home is worse--sometimes much worse--than what the schools are serving.

What's for Breakfast: 'Crush Cup'

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Here are the remnants of what Chartwells calls a breakfast "parfait" made of yogurt and granola. You could eat it with a spoon--or, in the case of school kids, a "spork." But kids are far to clever for that. They now call this a "crush cup."



Why a "crush cup"?

As you can see here, the cup is lifted with the hands directly to the mouth, where a sucking action pulls the yogurt and granola into the gullet. To maintain flow, you have to "crush" the plastic cup with your fingers.

Hence, "crush cup."

What's for Breakfast: French Toast with Yogurt

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Here's a different way to serve French toast: dressed with yogurt and blueberries. It sure beats the high-fructose "syrup" the D.C. Public Schools served in the past.

Chartwells at its menu site called this French toast "homemade" and it did look quite a bit different than the processed French toast strips that arrived at school frozen from a distant factory. I didn't have a chance to ask the kitchen ladies how it was prepared, but I imagine they could have dipped the bread in batter and baked it in the oven.

Of course this wouldn't really work for the many schools in the District of Columbia that have switched to serving breakfast in the classroom and no longer serve breakfast in the cafeteria. But those are only schools where 40 percent or more of the students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. Their breakfast menu called for turkey ham and egg on a whole wheat English muffin, or the same breakfast that was served in my daughter's elementary school on Tuesday.


One of the interesting questions in school cafeterias is how you eat something like this French toast without a knife and fork. Our schools only offer a plastic "spork" as eating utensil. What I was unable to capture with my camera was the boy who was eating his toast smeared with yogurt like an open-faced sandwich--with his hands. In this photo, you see that my daughter asked for her yogurt on the side. She also used her hands to eat the toast, since it is otherwise very difficult to cut.

Notice also that there's been a switch in yogurt, from a fruit-filled yogurt served in sealed, individual four-ounce containers made by Upstate Farms, to an organic, vanilla-flavored yogurt from Stonyfield Farm. The Stonyfield yogurt has slightly less sugar in it--but it's still a lot, 14 grams (2.5 teaspoons) in a half-cup serving, the same, ounce-for-ounce, as Classic Coke.

The question is still on the table: Can't anyone make a decent yogurt for kids without so much sugar?


This was the alternate breakfast: a parfait of yogurt, homemade granola and canned peaches. You have to love the presentation.

"All Natural" Yogurt?

Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells at its website calls this yogurt from Upstate Farms "all natural." I wonder why, since I didn't see any such claim on the packaging.

In addition to milk, water and fruit, this yogurt lists as ingredients modified corn starch, tricalcium phosphate, gellan gum, potassium sorbate, citric acid and carob bean gum.

So what is "all natural" supposed to mean, exactly?

What's for Breakfast: Cinnamon Oatmeal

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Here is the hot breakfast option Chartwells served at my daughter's elementary school on Wednesday. This is Quaker's "Quick Oats," cooked in the kitchen's steamer and seasoned with cinnamon. I tried it. It was good. Unfortunately, my daughter won't eat oatmeal. Her loss.

The cantaloupe is billed as "local," meaning it comes from a farm within the Mid-Atlantic region and earns the schools a five-cent bonus from the city under the "Healthy Schools Act." Along with Chartwells' online menus, the schools have posted a list of farms [PDF] where they are sourcing produce. However, the list does not include cantaloupe. Perhaps we can get someone from D.C. Public Schools to tell us where the cantaloupe comes from. It arrives raw, and one of the kitchen crew removes the rind and seeds and cuts it into large dice to be served. I tried it: It's ripe and flavorful.

Something that's a little less clear is why the schools insist on dosing the kids with orange juice every day in addition to milk. Otherwise, they've done an excellent job of removing much of the unnecessary sugar from the breakfast menu by eliminating chocolate and strawberry milk. A 4-ounce container of orange juice as shown here contains 11 grams of sugar in the form or fructose, or nearly three teaspoons. The yogurt also contains as much sugar, ounce-for-ounce, as Mountain Dew.

It could be worse. A similar sized portion of grape juice contains almost twice as much sugar, or five teaspoons. Do kids really need two beverages with breakfast? Schools are required to offer milk with meals. But they are not required to offer juice. Furthermore, this tray already has melon on it. Do kids really need two fruits with breakfast? And if you count the cherries in the yogurt, there are actually three fruits in this meal. Does that seem like overkill to you?

In fact, there's nothing stopping D.C. schools from offering juice on an occasional basis and using the savings to improve the quality of the food being served.

What's for Breakfast: Waffle with Blueberries

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

The menu posted by Chartwells on its website called this "warm whole grain waffles with organic yogurt dipping sauce." It also called for a "locally grown peach" and apple juice.

As you can see, the waffle is dressed with yogurt and blueberries, no "dipping sauce" involved. I was told in the cafeteria that this is the same raspberry yogurt served on a fairly regular basis. And as best as I can determine from the package, there is no indication that it is "organic." I'm quite sure it would not be organic, since organic dairy is not at all easy to come by and the second ingredient in this yogurt is cane sugar.

Nevertheless, this is quite a departure from waffles served in the past with a syrup made of high-fructose corn syrup. And how often do you see whole blueberries--one of the planet's healthiest foods--on an elementary school cafeteria tray?(I don't know if they arrived fresh or frozen.) Other than the really high sugar content of the yogurt--more than in Mountain Dew, ounce for ounce--this seems like a genius way to draw kids into healthier options for breakfast.

Out with Flavored Milk, In with Flavored Yogurt

Is sugary yogurt better than sugary milk?

D.C. school officials have ditched chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk because of the added sugar. But yesterday the kids who chose the alternate cold lunch at my daughter's elementary school were served a raspberry flavored yogurt with even more sugar, ounce-for-ounce, than Mountain Dew.

Other parents have noted that the same type of flavored yogurt is being served as part of breakfast to pre-schoolers.

Fortunately, the serving size is fairly small--just four ounces--meaning kids are eating at most 16 grams of sugar. That's 33 percent more than the naturally occurring lactose in an 8-ounce carton of low-fat milk. It works out to four teaspoons of sugar in that little plastic tub.

Apparently, finding a flavored yogurt without a ton of sugar isn't easy. Have you ever checked out the yogurts at the grocery store? They're full of sugar. In fact, most of them are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup. Maybe the food service folks in D.C. Public Schools thought this particular variety of yogurt was not so bad because it's sweetened with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. But as far as your body is concerned, the two are equally bad.

The yogurt is made by Upstate Farms, otherwise known as Upstate Niagra Cooperative outside Buffalo, N.Y., a group of Western New York dairies that's been in business since 1965, according to their website. Could we ask them to try making a yogurt for schools with less sugar?

In addition to live bacteria, these are the ingredients listed on the label: cultured pasteurized Grade A non-fat milk, sugar, water, raspberries, modified corn starch, whey, natural flavors, purple carrot concentrate, tricalcium phosphaste, gellan gum, potassium sulfate (for freshness), citric acid, carob bean gum, Vitamin D3.

A 4-ounce container counts as one "meat alternate" in the federal school lunch scheme. The other items in the cold alternate lunch were an individual piece of string cheese and wedges of pita bread. According to the Chartwells menu, the Wednesday alternate is supposed to contain a "hummus combo" to go with the pita, carrot sticks and "locally grown cucumber coins."

One thing you learn fairly quickly hanging around a school cafeteria is that the meals served are not always identical to the meals on the menu published at the Chartwells website.

What's for Breakfast

By Ed Bruske

Egg and sausage quesadilla with chocolate milk and baked apples.

Often, processed foods arrive at school in individual plastic packaging and are simply reheated as is from the frozen state. The kitchen at my daughter's school has a commercial steamer that heats meal items while still in the plastic, making service a breeze. They are displayed just like this in the food line.

What you see here in the plastic wrapper is an egg and sausage breakfast quesadilla. My daughter complained that she didn't want the quesadilla. What she had really wanted was a yogurt. But she said the kitchen staff would not allow her to make an exchange, so she asked me to intervene.

I took the offending quesadilla back to the food line, but when I tried to trade it in for a container of yogurt I got a real hard time from the woman sitting at the cash register, who wagged her finger at me and said, "No! No! No!" She said there were no exchanges allowed, but when I took the yogurt anyway she made me remove the quesadilla. "We can't take food back," she said.

Shouldn't the kichen crew be making eating more healthful food easier for the kids, not harder?


My daughter's breakfast companion declared the quesadilla "good." This is how she ate it after opening the plastic--like a sandwich.

Ed Bruske writes The Slow Cook blog.