ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, May 28, 1996 TAG: 9605290040
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
NOTE: Below
THE USDA has allocated $14 million to train school food service workers in preparing tasty, nutritious meals for kids.
Cafeteria manager Thomas Lance sees teen-agers cringe as a woman in a hair net plops a mystery meat on their school lunch trays. It's not only high in fat and salt, but tastes lousy.
``We've got these breaded pork strips that came from the Agriculture Department commodities program, and they're just awful,'' Lance said. But fat and sodium are staples in menus of nearly all American public schools.
Only 1 percent of the schools surveyed in a recent study met the federal government's 1994 dietary guidelines, including limits on fat and salt, said Ellen Haas, undersecretary in charge of food and nutrition for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The USDA reported in 1993 that 38 percent of the calories 25 million students a day eat at school came from fat - 15 percent of it saturated fat. It also said that students were consuming twice the recommended amounts of sodium.
The Agriculture Department says those numbers are unhealthy, and it has allocated $14 million and enlisted the help of the Culinary Institute of America to train school food service employees.
``There will be a very significant shift in the kinds of lunch that will be served in the next school year,'' Haas said.
Cafeteria managers across the country will be spending part of the summer changing lunch menus and cooking techniques to meet 1996 federal nutrition standards.
That means there will be less reliance on meat entrees, more ``just in time'' cooking so food is served fresh. It also means much less of the foods children love such as corn dogs and pepperoni pizza.
The USDA is under orders to improve the nutritiousness of the food it ships to schools around the country, Haas said. ``For example, we've reduced the fat content in beef, taken out sodium in canned carrots and provided more turkey.''
At one of the first school cooking training programs in a test kitchen at Virginia Tech last week, Appomattox High School cafeteria manager Bernadette Servis gave a skeptical wince as she mixed a bowl of tabouleh salad.
It tastes good, she told a chef directing the cooking class, one of a seven taking place in different states this spring and summer.
It's healthy, she said. It's not mystery meat. More of a mystery salad for those not used to the Mediterranean dish of cracked wheat and chopped fresh vegetables.
``This is something new for me,'' Servis acknowledged. ``I'll probably have to start it out with taste samples on the cafeteria line.''
As school cooks look for ways to make lunches more nutritious, they also have to figure out how to make their nouvelle cuisine appetizing.
``We don't want the children going home hungry,'' said Beverly Oakley, a nutritionist with the National Food Service Management Institute. ``It doesn't matter how nutritious it is or how good we think it tastes, if the children don't put it on their trays we've accomplished nothing.''
Lance, who manages the food service for seventh- and eighth-graders in Bristol, said it will be tough to retrain the school cooks. ``A lot of people, especially women who work with me in the school, are set in their ways.''
He said his efforts to introduce some low-fat dishes have failed.
``It's a tricky thing,'' Oakley said. ``By the time a child gets to school they have established their food likes and dislikes. It's an uphill battle. We're competing against McDonald's and the other fast food chains.''
But chef David St. Jean-Grubb of the Culinary Institute let his students in on some trade secrets along with techniques in cooking tastier, healthier food.
``You have to get inside a child's head,'' he told them. ``Why does a child like fast food? Because it all tastes sweet.''
To get them to eat carrots, for example, add some brown sugar or honey, he suggested.
St. Jean-Grubb taught them how to blanch vegetables to retain their bold colors, how to steam and stir-fry and how to saute with very little oil. He showed them how to flavor foods with spices and citrus rather than salt.
The 24 cooks dressed in white aprons and chef's hats made entrees such as barbecue turkey pizza, confetti tossed spaghetti salad and white crunchy vegetable pizza.
``We can do it in restaurants,'' he said. ``Why can't we do it in food service?''
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: LORA GORDON/Staff. Sandra Swails (center) and Serenaby CNBSuthers (left) take direction from chef David St. Jean-Grubb during
a school cooking training program at Virginia Tech last week. The
program offers school food service workers a chance to learn new
techniques for making cafeteria food more
enjoyable and nutritious. color.