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The Houston Independent School District is making an effort to ensure a healthy, affordable lunch experience for both their students and the district.
The 2009-2010 school year marks the first, full-time use of a brand new, centralized food services facility. The $50 million building, located on Bennington Street in northeast Houston, distributes 220,000 meals served fresh daily to the entire district.
"We always strive to serve the most nutritious meals possible by buying the freshest ingredients possible," said Julie Spreckelmeyer, director of marketing and communications for Aramark/HISD.
With the new facility, HISD is capable of preparing more made-from-scratch meals with "control over the ingredients" as opposed to pre-processed frozen ingredients, served on individual campuses. The approach, said Spreckelmeyer, helps the district keep better watch as to what goes into a recipe and what comes out the facility.
HISD is able to cut out the middle man and save taxpayer dollars, said Spreckelmeyer, because goods can be purchased directly from a manufacturer, instead from a distribution center. For example, with the money spent on one foot-long Subway sandwich, a consumer could buy a loaf of bread, pack of meat and vegetables for a dollar or two more, but have the ability to make 10-times as many sandwiches for the roughly the price of one. With the new Bennington Street facility, HISD will be able to calculate the efficiencies of scale in Texas's largest school district.
Aramark is not cutting its workforce, Spreckelmeyer said. With everyone working in one consolidated central location, instead of at nearly 300 campuses, safety can be more easily monitored, she said.
When the initial pilot program last spring, 20 campuses at-a-time were given the opportunity to sample the new lunch menu. Each school saw in increase in student participation. Although numbers for the current school year have not been released, Spreckelmeyer expects an increase in student lunches consumed in part because of marketing strategy based on the overall appearance of made-from-scratch meals.
"Children eat with their eyes; and so if the types and kinds of foods are not there, they"re going to stop and not participate," said Dr. Karen Cullen, associate professor of Pediatrics and Nutrition at the Children"s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine. "It's children making a choice to eat [school] food," she said.
Under the National School Lunch Program, guidelines have played an important role in what can and cannot be served. The program offers financially eligible students with nutritionally balanced low-cost-or-free meals throughout the day.
In late October, the U.S. Department of Agriculture asked the independent nonprofit Institute of Medicine to revise the current school lunch guidelines to be in-line with the latest nutritional standards, said Cullen.
A previous school lunch report called for an increase in variety of fruits, vegetables and whole grains as well as for the ingredients with less saturated fat and sodium. The state of Texas has already begun serving milk with 1 percent or less fat.
"For the first time, school lunches have a minimum and a maximum amount of calories," Cullen said.
HISD provides eligible children with breakfast and lunch but not dinner.
"Parents are the ultimate first teachers of child eating behaviors," said Cullen. "Schools provide healthy food " nutrition and [teach] what a healthy diet is. But parents have a responsibility to make sure the home food environment is healthy and has healthy food choices."
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