What's for Breakfast: Bagel and Egg

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

These scrambled eggs are made from liquid eggs--but that's an improvement over the eggs that were prescrambled in a factory and shipped to the schools frozen, right?

Any way you slice them, bagels are loaded with carbs--more than several slices of bread. Now they're billed as "whole wheat," but that only means they contain 51 percent whole wheat flour by law. The rest is starchy plain flour.

The USDA's proposed meal guidelines would increase grains at breakfast by 80 percent--and within two years, all grain products on kids' trays would have to qualify as "whole grain-rich." Meaning at least 51 percent.

Kids do seem to like the "whole grain" bagels better than the whole grain pasta, which typically ends up in the trash.

What's for Breakfast: Bagel & Egg

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

A growing scientific consensus finds that the real culprit behind our modern dietary problems is not fat, but carbohydrates. Americans eat way to many of them, especially sugar, refined grains and potatoes.

Of course, those just happen to be the things kids like most to eat, which helps explain why we find ourselves in the middle of a childhood obesity epidemic. So where does that leave a breakfast bagel like this one, chock full of carbs, or even the fruit juice? Guidelines for the national school meal program require lots of grains, just like the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

It seems our guidelines are years behind the current science. They haven't even caught up to where the science was years ago. And here's another problem: carbs are cheap, making them a much easier fit in school meals. Healthy proteins and fats are more expensive. But then, healthier food in general is more expensive.

Does that mean school food has to be unhealthy?

I've tried this bagel and egg sandwich. It's actually not bad. These days the eggs are scrambled from liquid eggs, rather than buying pre-made, frozen egg patties. And the oranges, conveniently cut into wedges, are fresh. The string cheese is a nice add this year.

What's for Breakfast: Bagel & Egg

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

I've spent less time lately hunting down the packaging labels that would indicate the ingredients in items like this whole wheat bagel. So unfortunately, until I do find the label or until the D.C. schools post the ingredients as required under the Healthy Schools Act passed earlier this year, I can't tell you what's in it. You can expect that it was shipped frozen from a factory somewhere and thawed in the school kitchen.

The egg patty in this sandwich also would have been processed and purchased frozen for re-heating under last year's food service scheme. But this year, our kitchen ladies are making egg dishes from scratch using pre-packaged liquid eggs.





This is what the sandwich looks like on the inside. Most of the calories are in the bagel, which also delivers a truckload of carbs.

Whole Wheat Bagel Ingredients

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

No sooner were the pixels dry on this morning's post about a whole wheat bagel breakfast than I managed to scrounge a shipping carton listing the ingredients.

Like the hamburger bun served at my daughter elementary school last month, the bagel is made by a company called Bake Crafters in Collegedale, Tenn. And, like the hamburger buns, the English muffins arrive frozen and only need to be thawed to be served. The listed ingredients are these:

Whole wheat flour, bleached bromated enriched wheat flour (niacin, thiamine mono-nitrate, ferrous sulfate, potassium bromate, riboflavin), water, brown sugar, granulated sugar, contains 2% or less of the following ingredients: salt, yeats, vital wheat gluten, mono- & diglycerides, dried honey (honey, invert sugar, corn syrup, wheat flour, wheat starch, soy flour and silicone dioxide), dried molasses (molasses, soy flour, corn starch, and silicone dioxide), guar gum, corn meal, malted barley flour, corny syrup solids, caramel color, calcium propionate, soybean oil, ascorbic acid, L-cystene, soy four, enzymes.

Obviously, that's why it tasted so good.

According to the Bake Crafters website, one whole wheat bagel is the equivalent of two bread servings in the school meal program. Unfortunately, the website does not give calore information for the bagel.

What's for Breakfast: Whole Wheat Bagel

Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

A "whole wheat bagel" with "all natural sunflower butter" was the alternate choice for breakfast yesterday, along with juice and milk. Occasionally my daughter eats breakfast at school, so I got a chance to try the bagel and the sunflower butter.

The bagel is more like bread--very soft, but not bad. I'm curious to know who makes it and what's in it, but I haven't found a package label for it yet. Under the "Healthy Schools Act" passed by the D.C. Council earlier this year, the schools are required to post the ingredients for all the foods they serve in a place where the public can easily find them. They say they'll be launching an interactive website in November.



Here's a close-up of the Sunbutter (my daughter took these photos). Sunbutter is made by Red River Commodities in Fargo, N.D. According to the company's website, the "creamy" version of its sunflower butter contains sunflower seed, sugar, mono-diglycerides "to prevent separation," salt and "mixed tocopherols to preserve freshness."

A two-tablespoon serving of Sunbutter contains 200 calories, 16 grams of fat (mostly polyunsaturated and monounsaturated), three grams of sugar (less than a teaspoon) and seven grams of protein. It also delivers heft portions of Vitamin E, magnesium and copper.

Vegetarian Alternate: Bagel with Sunflower Butter

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

The standing alternate cold meal on Mondays that Chartwells lists for elementary schools is "whole wheat bagel combo with sunflower butter, part skim string cheese, and marinated locally grown tomato and cucumber salad."

The only thing missing here in is the string cheese. Otherwise, the vegetables look incredibly fresh. And sunflower butter?

That's a new one on me. I had to do a little research.

Sunbutter bills itself as a peanut-free alternative to peanut butter, but it tastes very much the same. Made by Red River Commodities in Fargo, N.D., a two-tablespoon serving of the "creamy" variety contains 16 grams of fat, half of which is mono-unsaturated, 4 grams of dietary fiber and 3 grams of sugar, or less than a teaspoon.

A single serving, according to the company, delivers 27 percent of the recommended daily requirement for Vitamin E.

Breakfast Bagel

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Here's a hopeful sign: my daughter continues to report no hot food in the breakfast D.C. schools are serving in the classroom. On the downside, she says the kids are still being offered chocolate and strawberry milk to pour on their sugary cereal. Note to D.C. school food services: this would be a perfect time to start eliminating sugared-up milk products from the menu.

The last reported hot breakfast item at our school was this breakfast bagel. It actually looks more like a pizza. But I recently came across the labeling from a shipping container and the correct appellation is "breakfast bagel." It's made by Schwan's Food Service in Marshall, MN, the same company I wrote about yesterday as the maker of the frozen pizza served in D.C. schools.

The breakfast bagel is also shipped frozen, 96 2.5-ounce portions in each box. In a 375-degree convection oven they take just 8 to 10 minutes before they're ready to serve, according to the package instructions. However, I don't think our school cooks them in an oven because they're served while still inside their individual plastic wrappers, as you can see from this photo. I suspect they're heated in the kitchen's steamer. Some parents are put off by the thought of kids eating food that's been heated inside plastic wrapping.

These breakfast bagels are engineered to meet federal school meal standards. According to the package, "one 2.6 oz. Breakfast Bagel provides 1 oz. equivalent meat/meat alternate and 1 serving of bread alternate for the Child Nutrition Meal Pattern Requirements."

The bagels are "topped with law moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese and mozzarella cheese substitute, turkey sausage and textured vegetable protein product, and pizza sauce."

Here are the ingredients:

"Toppings: Mozzarella cheese/mozzarella cheese substitute (low moisture part skim mozzarella cheese [pasteurized milk, cultures, salt, enzymes], mozzarella cheese substitute [water, corn oil, nonfat dry milk, modified food starch potassium chloride, sodium citrate, sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium tripolyphosphate, tri-calcium phosphate, magnesium oxide, ferric orthophosphate, vitamin A palmitate, niacinamide, zinc oxide, cyanocobalamin, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6)]), turkey sausage and textured vegetable protein topping (turkey sausage [mechanically separated turkey, water, spices, salt, potassium chloride, garlic, hydrolyzed vegetable protein (hydrolyzed corn, torula and brewers yeast, wheat gluten, soy protein), sugar], water textured vegetable protein product [soy flour, zinc oxide, niacinmide, ferrous sulfate, copper gluconate, vitamin A palmitate, calcium pantothenate, thiamine mononitrate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, vitamin B12]);

"Crust: Enriched wheat flour (niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, malted barley flour, ascorbic acid), water, sugar, contains 2% or less of: malt syrup (barley malt extract, corn syrup), yeast, salt, dough conditioner [vegetable gum, L-cysteine, enzymes], calcium propionate;

"Sauce: Water tomato paste [not less than 28% soluble solids], modified food starch, sugar, corn oil, dextrose, salt, spices, dehydrated onion, dehydrated romano cheese [pasteurized cultured cow's milk, salt, enzymes], garlic powder, paprika, citric acid, beet powder."

What's for Breakfast: Egg & Cheese

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Here's something I had not seen before: an egg patty, smeared with processed cheese, served alongside a bagel.

Presumably, the egg patty is supposed to be sandwiched between the bagel slices.

I wondered if the egg patty came from the same place as the scrambled eggs served at my daughter's elementary school. Those are cooked with about 11 other food industry ingredients in a factory in Minnesota and shipped frozen. Well, just about everything served in the school cafeterias in the District of Columbia is made in a factory somewhere and shipped frozen.

From what I saw, the kids approached this breakfast tentatively. They seemed more interested in the bagel than the egg. They just didn't like the looks of that cheese. Can you blame them?

What's for Breakfast: Bagel & Strawberry Milk

What, no lox?

With the daily doses of fruit juice and flavored milk in the morning, kids in D.C. schools are maintained on a high level of sugar. The strawberry milk from Cloverland Dairy in Baltimore, for instance, contains 28 grams of sugar (including the 13 grams of naturally occurring lactose), only a bit less than Mountain Dew.