What do you remember about your school lunch program? Did you eat hamburg sundae? Salmon pea wiggle? Chinese pie? How about McCluckins? Most of us have memories of friendly lunch ladies scooping overcooked green beans onto our lunch trays. Would you like a brownie with that? How about chocolate pudding?
The days of high-sugar desserts and mystery meat in gray gravy are in the past. The friendly lunch ladies are still there, though.
The lunches served in public schools are changing nationwide. Some of these changes are federally mandated. The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 created nutritional standards for all foods sold in schools, including bake sales, vending machines, and meals served under the National School Lunch Program. And some of the changes are consumer-driven.
Parents and students want more from their lunch programs than foods with the federally-mandated nutritional minimums, and school lunch programs have competition. More and more parents are packing lunches. Many high schools have open campuses, allowing students to leave and buy lunch from local businesses.
To meet the changing demands and increase participation (the percentage of students buying school lunches), school districts are focusing on healthier foods, cooked from scratch, using local ingredients. The Concord School District is at the forefront of these changes.
Partnerships with local farms and manufacturers are vital to the success of a lunch program.
Beef from Miles Smith Farm, apples from Meadow Ledge, corn from Beans and Greens, salsa and chips from Mitchell’s Fresh; all are served in the Concord School District. The closer to the farm, the fresher the food. Increased local purchases can decrease a district’s reliance on federal surplus commodity foods.
How can a school district afford to buy premium beef or high-end salsa? School districts have buying power. The Concord School District serves 3,000 meals a day. Roasted carrots are on the menu? We need 700 pounds of fresh carrots for that day. Creamed corn? Five-hundred and fifty pounds of farm fresh NH corn, please. Three-thousand hamburgers is an entire cow. Buying food at these quantities opens a lot of doors, and redirects federal funds into our local economy.
Ken Meter, an economist with the Crossroads Resource Center (Minneapolis), has analyzed food systems from an economic standpoint. He determined “local foods may be the best path for promoting community economic development,” with an economic multiplier of up to 2-4. The food budget for the Concord School District is almost half a million dollars. With an estimated 40 percent of this budget being spent locally, we are injecting up to $800,000 into our regional economy.
So the next time you send your child to school with lunch money, you’re not only buying a healthy and delicious meal made with whole, local ingredients and enabling our children to become better learners, you’re also decreasing a school district’s reliance on surplus commodity foods, stimulating the local economy, and helping to create a financially viable lunch program.
John Lash is the food service director for the Concord School District. For more information regarding the CSD lunch program, he can be reached at jlash@concordnhschools.net, or follow him on Twitter @ConcordNHLunch.
The Capital Area Wellness Coalition meets in the Smile Building on the second Wednesday of each month at 8 a.m. For more information, call 867-8194 or visit capwellness.org.
