
DATE: Friday, October 17, 1997              TAG: 9710170647

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B4   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY NANCY YOUNG, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE                        LENGTH:   80 lines

SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAM DISHES UP NUTRITION, VARIETY

Jessica Kesper has a wish for the school lunch program.

``I want macaroni and cheese, the good kind,'' said the fourth-grader at Western Branch Intermediate.

The good kind?

``The kind that's in the boxes. You know, like Kraft macaroni and cheese,'' she said.

So what's wrong with the kind they serve at school?

``It tastes like homemade,'' Jessica said.

``It's really good, but it's too cheesy,'' her friend Kathryn Smith added diplomatically.

Today marks the close of National School Lunch Week, when the work of those who must strike a balance between good nutrition and sensitivity to children's tastes is celebrated. Last year, in 94,000 schools across the nation, more than 26 million meals were served.

``I'd like to see McDonald's shake a stick at that,'' said Larry Wade Sr., supervisor of food services for Chesapeake.

In Chesapeake last school year, an average of 17,273 students a day ate more than 3 million lunches. Students also consumed almost 715,063 school breakfasts.

Not all of those lunches were finished. Wednesday's oven-fried chicken went uneaten on Brandon Holtmeyer's plate as the fourth-grader happily munched on an ice cream cone.

The trick, of course, is finding food that children will eat in a meal that's nutritionally balanced and lower in fat than the school lunches many adults remember.

``It doesn't matter how nutritional it is, if to the kids it doesn't look good, or if they think it's not going to taste good - they're just not going to eat it,'' said Ruth Cummings, the district's supervising nutritionist.

But offering children good, nutritious meals is the point of the school lunch program. Poor nutrition has been linked to poor performance in school.

Cummings does a nutritional analysis of each school lunch and looks for balance over the course of the week. If a high-fat meal is on the menu, it will be followed by one lower in fat, so that, on average, the meals the students eat will have no more than the federally recommended 30 percent of calories from fat.

Still, children like high-fat foods. Last year, food warehouse manager Steve Dublinski shipped almost 700,000 pounds of french fries, along with roughly $60,000 worth of ketchup packets to all the schools.

If students aren't always choosing the nutritionally ideal items from the school lunch, they're also not always bringing in great lunches from home, either.

``Some are wholesome lunches that I would salute parents for. Then I see lunches that,'' Wade paused, looking for a way to be diplomatic, ``could stand some improvement.''

For some children, the school lunches and breakfasts may be the only balanced meals they get. Families where both parents work may often find themselves scrambling at breakfast and dinner times. And nearly a quarter of the city's children qualify for free and reduced-cost lunches.

And even though the macaroni and cheese tastes homemade, that didn't seem to deter Clyde Sheely, principal at Deep Creek Middle School, from ordering it, along with ``smokies''- little sausages. He decided to forgo the Mexican food offerings, which were included as a part of National School Lunch Week's theme of A World of Taste.

``I'm an old country boy at heart,'' said Sheely.

Still, in keeping with the cosmopolitan spirit of the week, Sheely took just a bit of salsa to go with his sausages.

``To make it Spanish,'' he joked. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot

Hazel Chavis serves lunch at Western Branch Intermediate School in

Chesapeake on Thursday. Lunchroom workers wore leis and flowers in

honor of Pacific Rim Day. This is National School Lunch Week.

Graphic

FOOD FACTS

Chesapeake parents can get a complete nutritional analysis of each

meal from each cafeteria manager or by calling the food service

office at 547-1470. The Food Service Office is also looking for