Ecotrust in the News

Portland Tribune
October 7, 2006
By Eric Bartels

Fighting the good food fight

Public schools are changing cafeteria culture, one lunch at a time

It's the noon hour at Madison High, and students are walking away from the school cafeteria in droves, in search of lunch.

Across Southeast 82nd Avenue, El Burrito Loco #3 is stuffed like a relleno with Madison students, forcing the guy behind the counter to shout order numbers at the top of his lungs.

"No. 55 and 56," he cries, "chili cheese fries!" Other dishes may be spicier, but at $2.50, it's the hottest item on the menu.

This is what Kristy Obbink, director of Nutrition Services for Portland Public Schools, is up against. Her department established new standards for the quality of on-campus foods this school year, spurred by a national mandate and a districtwide wellness policy created in 2005.

But she knows can't control her children.

"I can't force them to eat," says Obbink, a certified nutritionist in her third year as director of Nutrition Services.

What Obbink has done is provide healthier choices and cut back on the more nutritionally egregious offerings from past years.

As of this school year, soft drinks have been replaced by fruit juice and bottled water in vending machines. A year ago, purveyors like Pizza Hut, Godfather's and Pizzicato — which had sold their products in middle and high schools — were shown the door.

In the past, Obblink says, "They could buy three pieces of Pizza Hut pizza, a large fries and a chocolate milk and make that a lunch."

Yes, kids can still get pizza. But Obbink says the version now available is made with whole grain flour and skim mozzarella. It and other entrees, like chicken nuggets and Asian-style popcorn chicken, are flanked by tossed salads and shelves filled with apples and oranges.

"Foods should be plentiful and should be nutritious," she says. "Would we like to not serve chicken nuggets all the time? Absolutely. Unfortunately, we're feeding a wide population of kids with diverse taste preferences."

Despite obstacles, educators and others are seeing some hopeful signs one month into the school year.

Eric Levine, an English teacher at Cleveland High, feels he's having to deal with less "fast-burn sugar energy" from his students, and he's heard the same thing from other faculty members.

"I'm seeing a lot more focus in my classrooms," he says. "Almost every other teacher said, 'Yeah, I'm seeing that, too.' Having one kid going crazy on gummy worms can be a distraction for a good part of the class."

Cleveland junior Stephen Pederson, who says he drinks as many as 12 soft drinks a day, has spotted a trend with the vending machines: "Since the pop's been gone, we're always out of juice."

That's good news for Paresh Patel, president of Courtesy Vending, which maintains 35 snack vending machines in Portland schools.

Initially, sales crashed with Nutrition Services' new restrictions, Patel says. Now they're coming back.

"I think the kids are going to make some adjustments. I think they'll come back and say, 'What choices do I have here?' You're not going to get 100 percent of the kids on board, but I think the majority of kids will pick up on this."

Moreover, Levine says, the proximity of the vending machines may begin to pay off.

"The kids will say, 'I can just get a soda somewhere else,' and they can. But they don't. It's not convenient."

It's not an easy task

Obbink admits Nutrition Services has bitten off a lot.

"When I stopped selling those great big muffins right there," she says in the cafeteria of Benson Polytechnic High School, "that was a huge risk."

The "a la cart" vendors like Pizza Hut generated a million dollars a year for Nutrition Services, she says, a sizable portion of its $14 million budget. She says her department receives no financial help from the state.

"We are not a line item. The school district wants us to pay our own way."

And beyond budget issues, Nutrition Services faces an issue that has bedeviled parents for generations: getting kids to eat right.

At Benson last week, most of the student body seemed to have stayed in for lunch, despite the school's proximity to the wonders of Lloyd Center.

Like other Portland high schoolers, they can spend $2.25 and get a meal that includes an entree, some kind of carbohydrate, and virtually unlimited fruit and salad, although Obbink concedes the latter is little more than a delivery system for ranch dressing.

But nobody makes the kids sit at the table until they finish. Nor does anyone threaten to withhold dessert or TV.

"It's the kids' responsibility to eat," Obbink says. "You could throw away everything else and eat the pizza."

Part of the problem, she says, is that teenagers are virtually always in a hurry. Apart from the social demands on their plate, many schools allow only around 30 minutes for lunch.

"Finger food, you can do that," Obbink says. "Salad is hard. You have to sit down with a fork and eat it."

Cleveland freshman Taja Nelson says money is also an issue. It costs her $2 for a small bag of granola from the vending machine. She can get a decent-sized order of french fries from the McDonald's on Southeast Powell Boulevard for half that.

"It's a simple, obvious choice," she says.

'It's OK'

The allure of cheap, familiar foods that travel well often trumps health considerations, even among students who have absorbed lessons about nutrition at school or elsewhere.

"I don't think knowledge translates into action," Obbink says.

She tries out an impromptu survey of diners, asking a girl at Benson what she thinks of the food.

"It's nasty," the girl replies. Pressed, she relents a bit "Some of it is good, like the pizza."

Back at El Burrito Loco #3, a Madison High junior named Anthony says he has no beef with the food quality in the school cafeteria, which Obbink calls one of the most successful in the district.

"There's enough variety," he says. "They serve continental food, Asian food, Italian food, which is basically pizza. It's OK."

Still, Anthony says, he leaves campus for lunch twice a week on average.

His classmates Sarah and Tosha, also juniors, are far less loyal to the cafeteria. Though both say the food there is fine, they eat at school "maybe once every two weeks," according to Sarah, and Tosha nods.

So it's more about getting away from campus? All three nod.

An early start

At Abernethy Elementary School in Southeast Portland, Nutrition Services is after even younger hearts and minds.

A pilot program that began last fall changed a heat-and-serve facility into a "scratch kitchen," which creates virtually all its menu offerings from local produce and foods grown in the school's own garden.

If eating healthy is problematic, nobody told the first-graders lined up outside the kitchen on a recent morning. One says there was no way he was bringing lunch from home on this day.

"They have tomato soup," he says, incredulous that anyone would ask.

The educational piece at Abernethy, where kids work in the school garden as part of their curriculum, appears to be paying dividends. Some parents have reported that their kids now insist on a healthier diet, even snubbing fast food.

Obbink says many adults could use a refresher course themselves.

"Does our population even know where food comes from anymore?" she wonders. "Our food supply is so plentiful and so cheap that it's undervalued."

With obesity one of America's top killers, Obbink says serving unhealthy food in our children's schools is a deadly kind of hypocrisy.

"Are we just reinforcing bad eating habits?" she asks. "There's a whole group of kids that do want to eat right. The cafeteria should try to reflect what they're learning in health class or at home.

"I think the culture in Portland Public Schools has changed. As a person who really believes food should be part of family and part of community, I wanted to get ahead of the game."

ericbartels@portlandtribune.com