More Changes To A School Menu

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From Your Health Journal…..”New guidelines across the United States for healthy lunches have helped make school lunches a better choice for children. The new guidelines, encompassed in the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act require set calorie limits, increased daily servings of fruits and vegetables, adding more whole grains and reductions of saturated fat and sodium. In some schools, it is getting praise, as the parents are happy the kids have better choices, while in other school districts, the reviews are not as good, as the kids are saying they are still hungry after lunch. But, overall, hopefully these new measures will help prepare children for healthier eating habits that last a lifetime.”

From the article…..

When the new U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines for the National Student Lunch Program standards came out in January 2012 for the current school year, Amy Rouse, Fairbanks North Star Borough School District Nutrition Services Director, didn’t panic.

“We were doing a lot of the initiatives already,” Rouse said. “The huge change for us was how we plan our menu.”

The new guidelines, encompassed in the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act require set calorie limits, increased daily servings of fruits and vegetables, adding more whole grains and reductions of saturated fat and sodium.

If the district doesn’t comply, it risks not qualifying for the National School Lunch Program federal assistance.

Color, age-appropriate calorie menus, nutrients and taste must all be taken into consideration when planning menus under the new federal requirements, House said.

“The challenge for us was we had to be more conscious of the colors of the vegetables we served. We have weekly minimums on portion sizes of red/orange vegetables like, tomatoes, carrots and sweet potatoes and dark green vegetables, like collards, romaine, spinach and broccoli,” Rouse explained.

There are also weekly requirements for legumes including green, red and black beans, and starchy vegetables like white potatoes (1/2 cup per week), green peas and whole kernel corn.”

During the 21 school days of October, the Nutrition Center delivered 100,832 lunches around the district with a daily average of 4,775 lunches, as well as 32,227 breakfast meals to 32 school sites around the district.

Before the new regulations, meal planning was based on nutrient content and that was how we thought about menus and how we created them,” Rouse said.

The new guidelines started out being more time consuming, because of the thought process changes.

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