It’s been a long time since a deep fryer has cast a shadow in an Opelika school’s lunchroom.
“We turned our fryers off in the early ’90s,” said Melanie Payne, child nutrition director for Opelika schools. “Now every menu is analyzed for its nutrient content. I won’t say we’re perfect, but we’re working toward having healthier food more and more all the time.”
Payne is among lunchroom leaders statewide who realized that Alabama’s children were getting fatter and fatter on fried foods while fresh fruit and veggies from Alabama farmers were going to waste. Not only that, but the nutrient-deficient foods were costing the school system more to prepare, as the government wouldn’t reimburse the system for them, she said.
“We decided to move to the federal nutrient-based regulations instead of the food-based ones we were on,” she said, noting that one of those nutrient-based guidelines is to keep the amount of fat consumed at less than 30 percent of the children’s calorie intake.
“We’ve got an agreement with a group of Alabama farmers. They send us fresh foods every two weeks,” Payne said. “We bake more, and we get to have more fun and be creative with what we prepare. We don’t have as many limitations.”
Now things like locally grown romaine lettuce and shrimp caught on the Alabama coast fill the plates in Opelika. The children are healthier and have fewer health-related absences, Payne said. And they like it, too — the participation rate is more than 90 percent, she said.
Maureen Alexander, child nutrition program coordinator for Shelby County schools, said they encourage children in their system to buy healthier meals by making them cheaper than items like pizza.
“With the state adopting even stricter nutrition guidelines than the national regulations, we’ve found ways to ‘sell’ kids on healthier foods,” she said.
Perry Fulton, director of nutrition for the Alabama State Department of Education, said, “I’ve seen some school systems that have made great improvement. They are offering better, higher quality meals than 10 years ago. There are more folks getting involved in doing what is healthier for the children.”
During the 2006–2007 school year, Alabama school systems served 98 million meals for a total of about $300 million. Every school system in the state gets the same amount of money per child per meal to work with, he said. Children who don’t pay full price either eat for free or at a reduced price with the rest covered by funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture also provides various food items each year that are surplus on the market.
“It could be cheese, green beans, ham, ground beef or a variety of other things,” Fulton said. “For instance, we can usually count on pears, peaches and ground beef. And even though we normally have turkey, this year we won’t because of the drought and the heat. It just depends on the year.”
With the renewal of the Farm Bill due in September (see page 5), more money could be earmarked for school lunch programs if the House version of the bill becomes law.
The bill would change the funding basis of the school lunch program from discretionary to mandatory and authorize funding of $140 million for fiscal year 2009, $170 million for fiscal year 2010, $230 million for fiscal year 2011 and $300 million for fiscal year 2012.
The bill would also increase funding from $15 million to $70 million per year for a fresh fruits and vegetable project.
In the meantime, Alabama schools such as Opelika are finding innovative ways to make what they have go as far as it can to give children what they need.
“We’ve been able to test out some foods for Auburn University, foods that they are piloting such as
Alabama-adapted kiwi and tomatoes grown in water, not dirt,” she said. “It’s known that Opelika will try it if it’s something good for the students, and that has helped us enjoy a greater supply of resources.”
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