It was lunchtime at Kennedy Junior High in Lisle, and teacher Gerry Rounds was taking a quick inventory of the 6th graders’ food choices.
Hamburgers and spaghetti. Cheese sticks and chicken nuggets. Cookies and snack cakes. French fries–lots of french fries.
Healthy was not exactly the adjective that came to mind, but Rounds saw great promise on those cafeteria trays on her visit early this month, shortly before the end of the school year.
“We have a long way to go, but we’re making some progress,” said Rounds, a life and human services teacher who has become Naperville Community School District 203’s guru on healthy eating–namely, how to get kids to do it. “If we’re going to teach these things in the classroom, then we have to model that in the cafeteria.”
In the past two years, Rounds has spent a lot of time uncovering these junior high cafeteria mysteries. She’s the chairwoman of the districtwide project “Healthy Choices,” a nutrition-education program launched with the help of a $10,000 federal grant.
But soon Rounds won’t be the only cafeteria snoop. Starting this fall, junior high parents will be able to see exactly what their kids are buying with their lunch money as a result of a new debit-card system that will be expanded to all five district junior highs. The system was available for the last month of the school year in Kennedy on a trial basis.
The option will give parents the convenience of a prepay system for their kids’ lunches. They also will be mailed quarterly reports detailing what foods were bought on any given school day. The time and expense of mailing this report will be paid by Sodexho Marriott Services Inc., the district’s food-service contractor.
So, when a kid blows his lunch money on chips, fries, cupcakes and grape drink–instead of the spaghetti, bread, salad and milk on the menu–a parent will be able to decide what, if anything, can be done to change this trend.
“I think some parents will be very surprised,” Rounds said. “The beauty of having the debit system is the parents become aware of what their children are eating. If they’re spending $3 on chips, it’s not healthy, and it’s wasting money.”
The “Healthy Choices” program aims to hit at a number of levels, from re-energizing classroom lessons about nutrition to revamping the cafeteria menu and retraining food-service employees.
What that means is both more rules and more options on the junior high lunch line. French fries are now baked, not fried, and pupils are limited to one order per day–and never with the pizza combo lunch. And when it comes to the combo lunches, pupils do not qualify for the special $1.85 deal unless they have a fruit or vegetable on their plates.
Under this program, salad bars are in and Little Debbie snack cakes are out. There will be more soup and less cheese sauce and even a monthly “exhibition” entree where pupils can buy pastas and stir-fry dishes freshly prepared on the line by the food staff.
Rounds said these changes have been phased in gradually so that pupils get used to healthier foods without rebelling against the adult interference.
“It’s not that we want to tell the kids what to eat,” she said. “We just want to increase the fruits and vegetables and decrease the snacks.”
Based on some observations this month at Kennedy’s cafeteria, the pupils seem to have adapted to the changes with the indifference of a typical 12-year-old.
They throw an apple or a few lettuce leaves on their plate to appease the adult. And when they finish with their fries and cheese dip and fruit punch, the unwanted vegetables land in the cafeteria trash can.
