Rebates help get corporate brands into schools

D.C. Public Schools in the last two years have taken in more than $1 million in corporate rebates–referred to by some as “kickbacks”–paid by giant food manufacturers as an inducement to place their brands on kids’ cafeteria trays at school.

Documents obtained by The Slow Cook through the Freedom of Information Act show that Chartwells, the company hired by D.C. Schools to provide food services at 122 schools across the city, through February of this year had declared $1,076,738 in rebates it received since its contract began in the fall of 2008. That represents five percent of the $18.7 million in purchases Chartwells billed the school system during that period. Under federal law, Chartwells is required to credit D.C. schools for any rebates it receives.

Food manufacturers use the rebates as an incentive to entice purchasing agents to buy certain products over others for school meals. Rebates sometimes are referred to as “kickbacks” because poweful food service companies such as Chartwells expect to receive them,  much the way grocers expect manufacturers to pay fees to have their goods displayed on supermarket shelves.

Critics charge that the rebates–also called “volume discounts” or “buy backs”–act as a tool to help imprint processed and often sugary food brands in the minds of young children. Rebates help explain why kids in D.C. schools routinely are served sugary cereals such as Kellogg’s Apple Jacks, and treats like Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts, Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, Pepperidge Farm Giant Goldfish Grahams, and flavored milk from Cloverland Dairy that is nearly the sugar equivalent of Coke or Mountain Dew.

It could not be immediately determined from which manufacturers the rebates paid to D.C. Schools originated or in what amounts. Under U.S. Department of Agriculture rules governing the federally-subsidized school meals program, food service providers such as Chartwells are required to itemize the rebates they receive only when schools ask them to do so. Otherwise, the rebates appear simply as a lump-sum line item on the monthly invoices Chartwells submits to D.C. Public Schools for reimbursement.

Although the school system’s newly hired food services director, Jeffrey Mills, was said to be disturbed by the potentially corrosive effect rebates might have on D.C. school food purchases, apparently no one in the DCPS hierarchy had ever asked Chartwells for a breakdown of where the rebates come from.  On, May 28, I filed a second Freedom of Information Act request for an itemization of rebates received by Chartwells. Schools spokeswoman Jennifer Calloway last Thursday said DCPS has since asked Chartwells for a breakdown, but has not yet received one. [School officials later revealed they have been trying to get an itemization of rebates from Chartwells since last October.]

Much like rebates in the consumer world, rebates in the multi-billion-dollar universe of corporate food service are awarded by manufacturers after products are purchased. For instance, after a truckload of cereal is delivered, the purchasing company–Chartwells, in this case–would apply for the rebate and later receive a check.

But unlike you as an ordinary consumer sending in a coupon for a rebate on, say, a computer you bought at Staples, Chartwells and other large food service companies that specialize in school food deal in millions of dollars worth of rebates every day. Sodexo and Aramark are the two other companies most prominent in the field.

Chartwells is just part of a huge international food services conglomerate based in the United Kingdom–Compass Group–that reports annual sales of $9.3 billion. Chartwells provides the food each day for 2.5 million kids in more than 500 school districts across the U.S. Other affiliated companies in the group–Bon Appetit, Restaurant Associates, Thompson Hospitality, Morrison Management, Wolfgang Puck Catering, to name a few–are responsible for the food served in universities, corporate campuses, museums–all sorts of public and private venues, even oil drilling platforms–nationwide.

One thing all of these Compass Group subsidiaries have in common is a procurement operation that negotiates food purchases–and rebates–for the entire group. Called Foodbuy, and based along with Compass Group’s North American headquarters in Charlotte, NC, Foodbuy bills itself as “the nation’s largest group purchasing organization,” dealing in more than $5 billion worth of goods annually.

Between 35 and 40 Foodbuy employees are engaged full-time in negotiating contracts and rebates with manufacturers. Rebates become a major driver of purchasing decisions, said Ken Jaycox, vice-president for category development at Foodbuy. “We’re focused on net cost,” Jaycox said. “Our job is to try and get the best net cost for our customers.”

Jaycox suggested that the choice of foods served in school cafeterias is determined less by the rebates manufacturers offer than by negotiations between schools and Chartwells representatives over which foods are the best choices, and how they balance against the local food budget. But Rick Hughes, who spent eight years as a manager for Sodexo in Colorado, said performance evaluations were based in part on how well Sodexho employees adhered to the company’s choice of products, determined in large part by manufacturer rebates.

“We were rewarded for purchasing specific products,” said Hughes, who now works the other side of the fence–as food services director of Colorado Springs School District 11. “Especially if the company is mandating that you buy their foods, absolutely that’s what food service directors are buying,” Hughes said. “There’s big money tied up in big company food and agribusiness. There’s not a whole lot of money tied up in fresh vegetables and fruits. So just follow the money. That’s what’s being given to kids.”

As prevalent and influential as they may be, rebates are treated as a kind of third rail in school food services. Food manufacturers are loathe to talk about them.

Kellogg, with $13 billion in annual sales, is prominently represented in D.C. school cafeterias by Apple Jacks, Raisin Bran, Frosted Mini-Wheats and other cereals, as well as treats such as Pop-Tarts, all highly processed and laced with sugar. I first contacted the company via its “media hotline” on May 28 and posed questions about it’s rebate practices. When there was no response, I called again on June 15 and a third time on June 28, at which point I was asked to submit my questions in an e-mail.

On June 29, I received this e-mail reply from a Susanne Norwitz at Kellogg:

“With 14,000 plus school districts, there may be some exceptions–but overall, this is how the process works. The USDA sets the nutritional guidelines that schools follow to receive reimbursement from the government. The individual school boards may set additional specifications above and beyond the USDA requirements. Determinations about what cereals are offered in schools are based on these specifications–and rebates to the schools are intended to assist them in meeting their menu-cost requirements.”

Otis Spunkmeyer muffins, usually wrapped in plastic and warmed in a school kitchen steamer, also appear with some regularity as a D.C. school breakfast option. When I called the company headquarters in San Leandro, CA, I was referred to a public relations firm in Missouri, DEEP Group. Stephanie Heart, the DEEP representative I spoke with, was quite chatty at first, saying she was absolutely familiar with rebate practices from her years working in the food industry. “You’d be surprised how much like consumer rebates they are,” she said.

But Heart clammed up fast after she called her client, Otis Spunkmeyer, to pursue my questions. ”Everything is confidential. There’s not any information we can give you at this time,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a secret, but it’s just not something they [Otis Spunkmeyer] can share because of client confidentiality.”

Pepperidge Farm, the maker of Giant Goldfish Grahams, a breakfast staple in D.C. food lines, referred me to a representative, Frances Sirico, in Norwalk, CT. Some weeks after talking to Sirico by telephone, I received a curt e-mail stating: “Your request has been forwarded to our legal department. When I receive further information I will contact you.” 

I left several messages for James Cella, general manager at Cloverland Dairy in Baltimore, the main milk supplier for D.C. Schools. On June 28 I received an e-mail from Cella, saying, “In response to your question–Cloverland serves some of the D.C. schools thru a contract cafeteria managment company. We currently do not deal directly w/the schools, and do not invoice the schools. The best group to answer your question would be Compass Food group, and the other cafe mgt. companies D.C. has contracted with.”

So why all the secrecy? A March 2009 article in In These Times magazine, focused on Sodexo, suggested that the giant service companies were taking in hundreds of millions of dollars in rebates in ways that ended up costing customers money by focusing food purchases on large, national brands that can afford to give hefty discounts, rather than smaller, local companies that sell their goods more cheaply.

“The money involved is massive,” In These Times reported. “Charles C. Kirby, former USDA regional director for child nutrition in Atlanta, says he ran a Mississippi Education Department cooperative buying program from 1992 to 2001. He dealt directly with companies such as Heinz and Kellogg’s and received rebates ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent. In the last year, his rebates were $15 million out of $90 million in purchasing.”

 A 2002 audit by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that in a sample of Midwestern school districts, food service companies routinely ingored the rule that requires them to pass on to the schools any rebates they receive. They were just pocketing the money. In 2008, the USDA beefed up its rule on rebates, requiring that school contracts with food service companies clearly state that any rebates received by the companies will be credited to the schools.

Despite the new rules, it’s widely assumed in food service circles that the big players–Chartwells, Sodexo, Aramark–are not declaring all of the rebates to which school districts are entitled, hence the shroud of secrecy.

When I put that to Foodbuy’s Ken Jaycox, he replied without a trace of irony: ”I’m shocked and surprised by that allegation,” he said.

But Robert Pritsker, a New York City restaurateur who unsuccessfully sued Chartwells, Sodexo and Aramark in federal court, claiming the food service giants had since the 1990s improperly withheld at least $1 billion in rebates from schools, said the 5 percent rebate figure Chartwells has declared in D.C. sounds too small. In his own school district of Weston, CT, Pritsker said Chartwells claims at least 15 percent in rebates.

Jaycox said there are many factors that could explain the wide difference in rebate percentages reported by Chartwells in two different school districts.

Still, there’s enough intrigue and money surrounding the rebate question–and the role of corporate discounting in feeding popular but nutritionally dubious foods to millions of children in the federal meals program–that attorneys general in some states have taken notice. It may be less of an issue in D.C. schools in the coming year. Officials have decided to discontinue serving falvored milks and sugary cereals. But they have yet to answer questions about the future of Pop-Tarts, Otis Spunkmeyer muffins and Giant Goldfish Grahams.

Note: The In These Times article cited above was written by freelance journalist Lucy Komisar.

How much sugar is too much?

“Healthy Schools” legislation written by D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh comes up for its first committee vote today after months of deliberations and with one very conspicuous missing element: no regulation of sugar in school meals. 

Removing the astonishing amount of sugar served to D.C. school children every day is probably the quickest and cheapest way to make school meals healthier. But you won’t see any of that in the “Healthy Schools” legislation. How can that be, you might ask, when kids are being served 15 or more teaspoons of sugar every day for breakfast at school: strawberry milk the equivalent of Mountain Dew, candied cereals containing three or more teaspoons of sugar per serving, Pop-Tarts, juices that might as well be sodas. 

A teaspoon of sugar contains 16 calories, meaning the breakfast described above contains 240 calories worth of sugar, or 44 percent of the 550 calories the “Healthy Schools” bill sets as the maximum total breakfast calories D.C. school children through eighth grade should be consuming. 

Truth is, federal regulations that govern school food programs contain no limits on sugar in subsidized meals. Consequently, according to a top legislative aide involved in writing the “Healthy Schools” bill, there were no standards on which to base a limit on sugar for meals served in the Distict of Coumbia. 

“We certainly have heard the concerns that you and others have expressed about sugar in school meals, but we haven’t seen any guidance about how to regulate it,” the aide said. “Neither the HealthierUS [School Challenge] nor the IOM [Institute of Medicine] standards have recommendations for limiting sugar in school meals.  (The IOM notes, on page 52, that “By far the largest contributors to the intakes of added sugars (45 percent of the total amount) were regular soda and noncarbonated sweetened drinks,” which are heavily restricted under the HSA.)  Therefore, there does not seem to be any guidance about how to do it.” 

The American Heart Association last year issued specific guidelines on consumption of added sugars for adults, but not for children. For instance, the AHA recommended that “moderately active” women consume no more than five teaspoons–or 80 calories–of added sugar per day. That would rule out much of the food children are served daily in D.C. schools.

And what about flavored milk served at breakfast and lunch in D.C. schools? Chocolate milk contains the same amount of sugar as Classic Coke, and strawberry milk nearly as much as Mountain Dew.  The strawberry milk contains 28 grams of sugar–about seven teaspoons, three of which occur naturally as lactose–or 112 calories. That represents 66 percent of the 170 total calories in the one-cup containers routinely handed out in D.C. schools for breakfast and lunch. 

“Regarding flavored milk, we do understand your concerns, but we have also heard concerns from other nutritionists who say that milk is important for child development and that even if the milk is flavored it is better for children to drink flavored milk than to drink no milk at all,” the aide said. “We are not nutritionists and have no way to resolve this debate.  Therefore, we are choosing to use this bill to set the floor for school nutrition and then to empower OSSE [Office of the State Superintendent of Education] and schools to set higher standards — to ban flavored milk and other things if they so choose.” 

In fact, there is no scientific body of evidence indicating that children who are not offered a flavored milk option either drink less milk or are deprived of important nutrients. That seems to be more of an assumption encouraged by the dairy industry, which counts on flavored milk for a large portion of its sales.  

Still, how can it be that the federal meals program, in existence since 1946, has no standard to govern the use of sugar in school meals, especially at a time when child obesity and attendant diseases such as diabetes are such a concern? I asked Marion Nestle, a prominent nutritionist and author of  Food Politics.  

“Here’s the short answer: Sugar industry lobbying,” Nestle said.   

“And here’s a bit more: 

“Sugars were never a problem when schools were reasonably well supported in part because competitive foods were reasonably well regulated and in part because snacks were too.  All that changed when schools ran out of money and had to start pushing snacks and sodas in order to fill the budget gap.  Nobody paid much attention to what kids were eating—until recently.   

“No federal agency has ever set a maximum for sugar intake although dietary advice for years all over the world has been to limit sugars to 10% or less of daily calories.  That percentage was embedded in the recommendations of the 1992 USDA Pyramid which said, “Use sugars only in moderation.”  USDA defined “moderation” as 6 teaspoons a day of total added sugars for a diet containing 1600 calories, 12 tsp for 2200, and 18 tsp for 2800.  If you do the math (assume that a tsp is 4 grams and 16 calories), this comes to less than 10% of daily calories.  But the Pyramid did not say so explicitly.  That’s just how it works out.  

“Some years later, in developing the new Dietary Reference Intakes, the Institute of Medicine recommended 25% of calories from added sugars as an upper limit.   

“In the early 2000s, the World Health Organization attempted to set an upper limit of 10% of calories from added sugars to its global strategy for health.  U.S. sugar lobbying groups went berserk and got the attorney for the Department of Health and Human Services to write a letter to WHO threatening to withdraw U.S. funding if that recommendation was not eliminated.  The controversial figure disappeared.   

“The bottom line: no standard of intake exists so anything goes.  My understanding is that sugars not only pervade the meals, but also treats given out by teachers and brought in by parents for birthdays.   

“The one bright side is that the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act contains provisions to revisit the standards for school meals based on the Dietary Guidelines that will be coming out later this year. These, hopefully, will refer to a recent IOM report developing new school meals standards for the USDA.”

The IOM found that children’s consumption of “discretionary” calories from solid fat–as from hamburgers and pizza–and sugar “were much higher than the amounts specified” by the federal food pyramid. For children aged nine to 13, for instance, the excess averaged 543 calories, or about a third of the total daily calories recommended for children in that age group.

But rather than address sugar directly, the IOM panel took a back-door approach: increasing the amount of “healthy” foods in school meals and setting a maximum on calories served in school meals would drive down the amount of calories from sugar, the panel reasoned. “The committee notes that its approach to developing the standards for menu planning leaves relatively few discretionary calores for added sugars and saturated fat,” the report reads. 

But with “careful menu planning,” the panel suggests, schools would still have enough of those discretionary calories to make room for flavored milk and sugary cereals. “The ommission of those sweetened foods might result in decreased student participation as well as in reduced nutrient intakes.” 

Nestle calls this last statement by the IOM committee “a sellout. I’ve been in plenty of schools where the kids eat unsweetened foods and are doing just fine.  Those schools are run by adults who care what kids eat.  Kids will eat foods prepared by adults who care, as witnessed by Jamie Oliver.” 

Although Cheh’s original “Healthy Schools” bill embraced the proposed IOM standards, she abandonned them after school officials said they could not guarantee schools would be able to serve additional vegetables that kids would actually eat and not throw in the trash. The bill now adopts less stringent standards under the “HealthierUS Schools Challenge” sponsored by the USDA. Those standards likewise do not address the issue of sugar in school meals. 

Nestle said the best hope may be if Congress, in its pending re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act, requires that schools adhere to the government’s own Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Those call for no more than two to eight teaspoons of sugar per day for discretionary calories, according to Nestle. 

“The USDA [food] Pyramid allows 200-300 discretionary calories a day for fats and sugars.  That’s less than 10% of calories, and still not bad,” Nestle said.

Is anyone home at D.C. Schools Food Services?

I was ready to have a perfectly civilized discussion–blog-to-blog–with Sam Fromartz over at ChewsWise on the subject of what we can do to get kids to eat better when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the lunch being served at my daughter’s elementary school here in the nation’s capital. Look at the photo above and tell me what you see. Do you see the same thing I do? French fries, a bag of Sun Chips, and an 8-ounce carton of strawberry-flavored milk.

You almost have to rub your eyes and take a second look. Can this really be true? Hello, Jamie Oliver! Not all the bad school food is in Huntington, W.Va. We’ve got the same stuff right here in Washington, D.C., barely a mile from the White House.

To my knowledge, Michelle Obama has never addressed the glycemic bomb being served daily to public school children right outside her door. But I could be wrong. Yes, just a mile or so from the White House, where we’re told over and over  the Obamas are hard on the case, solving the nation’s childhood obesity epidemic, kids in elementary school are being served chips, fries and strawberry milk for lunch.

Oh, wait. I forgot the ketchup. Two foil packets of it. That should count for something. And as far as chips go, Sun Chips–made from corn, whole wheat, rice flour, whole oat flour–are probably the lesser of many evils. Still….

I actually found it heartrending to watch my daughter’s lunch group–10- and 11-year-olds–waiting patiently for their midday meal, first at their tables, then pressed against a wall in a queue near the door to the food line, only to emerge at the other end with this on their Styrofoam trays. Some also had a mealy-looking chili with beans. Some had a fresh pear. But under federal “offered-versus-served” rules, kids only need to take three of the offered items to qualify for a federally-subsidized meal. That’s how you get fries, chips and strawberry-flavored milk. (Fries count as a vegetable, and the milk protein, the chips grain. Get it?)

Yes, we can have a conversation about how to get kids to eat healthier foods. But first, we need to ask, Where are the adults in this picture? Children have not yet reached the age of consent. Grownups are supposed to take care of them. Yet when you enter a public school cafeteria, you step into a kind of culinary gulag where for years the adults grinding away anonymously inside have done their best to keep the truth of what they are doing hidden from the public at large. And the public at large has been just as happy not knowing the details. This was a matter we conveniently left in the hands of ”professionals”–food service workers, nutritionists, government regulators, food industry lobbyists–who have spent the last several decades devising ways to make “food” for children that grownups don’t have to pay for.

Now, with Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution” being aired on network television, and school meals showing up in vivid color in the blogosphere, we are finally getting a glimmer of what “school lunch” really means. It’s not a joke any more. What we feed children has consequences. And the pictures are ugly.

Yet it is obvious that children–and especially what they eat–are not a priority. We would much rather spend billions fighting foreign wars, building tanks, dropping bombs. Honestly, what we get from most politicians is lip service and a nickel tossed into the collection plate. We are on the brink of losing our collective memory of what constitutes real food. Yet no one is accountable. We are not to judge the “lunch ladies” too harshly. They are doing the best they can. We are not to judge the food service directors too harshly. They also are doing the best they can. We should not judge our local government leaders too harshly. They depend on federal dollars. We should not judge parents too harshly. They are busy working to make ends meat….

Would anyone like to step forward and take responsibility for feeding our children in school?

The final indignity came when I was abruptly stopped from taking further photographs in the lunch room by the school’s assistant principal. She whisked me off to a conference room where the principal was having lunch with teachers (what would happen if the adults at school had to eat the same food as the kids?) The principal told me she had been admonished for the series of articles I wrote from the school’s kitchen back in January, a glimpse behind the curtain that revealed the “fresh cooked” scheme the school system had recently implemented in collaboration with its contracted food service provider, Chartwells-Thompson, was nothing of the sort. To continue taking photographs of the food, the principal said, I would need clearance from higher up. “I don’t want to get in trouble again,” she said.

Turns out there was an aftermath to my expose of the D.C. school kitchen. The young kitchen manager I profiled, who liked so much to add shredded cheese to boost the flavor of all those industrially-processed dishes she was heating in the steamer, has disappeared, presumably re-assigned.

I’m trying to square this with what Anthony Tata, schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s chief operating officer, told The Washington Post about me and that series of articles on Feb. 12: “I think it’s great a parent is super-involved and we are soliciting his input as we go forward with our program changes,” Tata said.

Blah, blah, blah.

I accuse the adults responsible for school food of gross indifference. I accuse all of us of failing to step up to the plate. I challenge Chancellor Rhee and Anthony Tata to have a real conversation with parents about the food children are eating in school. But let us not fail because we refused to look at the problem square in the eye.

Mendy Heaps with grandchildren

Mendy Heaps, a stellar English teacher for years, had never given much thought to the food her seventh-graders were eating. Then her husband, after years of eating junk food, was diagnosed with cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure and suddenly the french fries, pizza and ice cream being served in the cafeteria at rural Elizabeth Middle School outside Denver, Col., took on a whole new meaning.

Heaps was roused to action. She started teaching nutrition in her language arts classes. She bombarded colleagues, administrators and the local school board with e-mails and news clippings urging them to overhaul the school menu. She even took up selling fresh fruits and healthy snacks to the students on her own, wheeling alternative foods from classroom to classroom on a makeshift “fruit cart,” doling out apples for a quarter.

Finally, the school’s principal, Robert McMullen, could abide Heaps’ food crusade no longer. Under threat of being fired, Heaps says she was forced to sign a personnel memorandum agreeing to cease and desist. She was ordered to undergo a kind of cafeteria re-education program, wherein she was told to meet with the school’s food services director, spend part of each day on lunch duty recording what foods the students ate, and compile data showing the potential economic impact of removing from the menu the “grab and go” foods Heaps found so objectionable.

“It was humiliating to stand in the cafeteria in front of the kids and the other teachers every day ‘collecting data,’ ” Heaps says. “I called it my penance.”

Heaps’ husband, Robert Heaps, a retired police officer, said his wife is paying the price for rocking the boat in a small town. “Unfortunately, she works in a sem-rural district in a tight-knit community where change isn’t always at the top of the list of things to do,” he said. “My only concern for Mendy is that it seems she is fighting a losing battle. I don’t care to see rifts created between her and the school board or the administration over an issue as important as this. I suspect she could become a target and subjected to hostile work conditions. But she appears to be up against a brick wall.”

McMullen did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The case of Mendy Heaps is a stark reminder that at least one voice is largely missing from the debate over school food that’s getting so much attention lately: the voice of teachers. Teachers see what kids eat every day. They have opinions about the the food and how it impacts children’s health and school performance. Yet they are almost universally silent.

With one notable exception: An Illinois teacher recently created an internet sensation by blogging anonymously and publishing photos about her self-imposed diet of cafeteria food. Calling herself “Mrs. Q,” she frequently writes about her fear that she could be fired for exposing what kids are eating every day at school.

As I was gathering information for this report, Heaps said her local teachers union urged her to stop talking to me. “The union rep in my building came to my classroom and ‘begged’ me to stop everything I was doing,” Heaps wrote in an e-mail. “She insisted they will find a way to ‘get rid of me’ and there is nothing the union will do to help me. HOW’S THAT FOR SUPPORT!!!”

Heaps says it isn’t so much the food served in the federally subsidized cafeteria line that concerns her most, although that’s bad enough: “Mashed potatoes and corn are usually served more than anything else, along with breaded chicken nuggets, chicken patties, and chicken tenders,” she said. “Hamburger patties are also served a lot–drenched in canned gravy with mashed potatoes sitting on top of a slice of bread or on a bun with a serving of corn or green beans.”

Students who choose the subisidized meal are also entitled to a salad bar. But only a small percentage of students at the school qualify for free or reduced-price meals based on family income and apparently fewer still choose to pay for the federally supported food. According to Heaps, some say they are embarrassed to be seen in the subsidized food line.

No, what really makes her blood boil are the alternate foods sold in what the school calls the “deli” line or “grab and go”:  Pizza, corn dogs, Subway sandwiches, Chick-fil-A, Cheetos, nachos, fruit rollups, ice cream sandwiches and especially the “healthy” fries. “They call them ‘healthy’ because they’re baked!” Heaps says. According to numbers she compiled while assigned to the cafeteria, somewhat fewer than half  the 170 students in seventh grade bring lunch from home. Only a very small number–15 to 24–eat the reimbursible “hot lunch,” she said. Between 25 and 30 do not eat, and the rest–58 to 78–purchase food at the “grab and go.”

It reminded Heaps too much of her husband’s lousy diet. “When I met him about nine years ago, the only liquids that passed his lips were Pepsi and coffee and sometimes orange juice. He never ate fruit or vegetbles or dank water. The folks at McDonald’s and Krispy Kreme knew him by his first name,” Heaps said. “If he did cook for himself, it was processed food–pizza, pot pies, hot pockets, hot dogs, canned soups and chili, lots of chips and Hostess cupcakes…Bob had no knowledge of nutrition–tomato sauce and french fries were vegetables, Wonder bread was vitamin fortified, and apple pie was the same thing as eating an apple.”

Robert Heaps was diagnosed with kidney stones and while he was being treated for that he was found to have bladder cancer. He underwent surgery three times to remove tumors, each time followed by weeks of chemo-therapy. Subsequently he was found to be suffering Type II diabetes and high blood pressure.

Mendy Heaps’ concern about the food being served at school became urgent. ”I started feeling guilty that I had never really done anything to change what was going on, even though I knew it was wrong.”  Heaps said she could not understand why the school condoned students eating so much “junk” food. “Why do we serve or sell ANYTHING that isn’t good for the kids?” she said. “I hate the food they serve, but I hate even worse that they sell so much JUNK along with the bad food they serve.”

According to Heaps, food services director Susan Stevens and other school officials respond that students are entitled to “treats,” and should be free to choose their own food. “They feel like my ideas are too radical and you should not ‘restrict’ kids,” Heaps said.

Stevens did not respond to requests for comment. In an e-mail she sent to Heaps on April 28, 2009, she said, “My job is to provide each student with a healthy meal that adheres exactly to CDE [Colorado Department of Education] mandated nutrition guidelines. Our kitchens and staff are regularly audited to prove that we follow these guidelines and that we are all in compliance with state safety and health regulations.”

Ron Patera, who oversees food services as the school system’s finance director, said in a statement, “Ms. Heaps and I are both in support of providing nutritious and safe meals to Elizabeth’s students so they have every opportunity to enhance their academic peformance. Elizabeth’s schools meet and exceed the Federal and State laws governing the National School Lunch Program.”

Federal nutrition guidelines currently do not cover foods sold outside the subsidized food line. Legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate would, for the first time, give the secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture authority to regulate all foods available in public schools. That measure reflects growing sentiment that schools need to address a nationwide epidemic of childhood obesity and stop selling nutritionally inferior food to students.

Heaps said one of her students was unable to use a standard-size desk in class because she was so heavy and had to be outfitted with a special table instead. That student habitually ate choco-tacos for lunch from the “grab and go”–two or three of them, according to Heaps–”and washed them down with a big Gatorade.”

Klondike brand choco-taco is an ice cream dessert folded inside a cookie and dipped in chocolate. A single choco-taco contains 290 calories (40 calories more than a McDonald’s cheesburger), 11 grams of saturated fat (four grams more than a BallPark beef hotdog) and 24 grams of sugar, (slightly less than a one-cup serving of Coca-Cola). “Of course the kids loved them and I’m sure the cafeteria made a boat load of money selling them,” Heaps said. “They were meant for dessert, but what middle school kids do–when they have money and there is a ‘concession stand’ open at lunch–is they buy only ‘dessert’ and eat it for lunch. Duh–they’re kids.” Heaps said the school no longer offers choco-tacos.

Heaps said she was told that sales from foods such as nachos and ice cream were needed to support the lunch program. But student behavior after meals was so disruptive, classes following lunch were rotated so that no single teacher would be forced to bear the brunt of it every day. “They were hyper and crazy…and then they crashed,” Heaps said.

At one point, Heaps began teaching nutrition with seventh-grade science teachers but found she could not reconcile what they were telling the children in class with what the children were being served in the cafeteria. In an e-mail she sent to the entire school staff, Heaps wrote: “When I started teaching nutrition a la language arts/science, I realized everything I was teaching did not go along with what is happening at our school when it comes to eating healthy. Do I simply tell the kids we need the money more than they need their future health? Or should I tell them that maybe only ‘some’ of them will get diabetes or cancer or have heart attacks–so go ahead and play the odds!”

Finally, Heaps took matters into her own hands and started selling what she considered healthier foods from her “fruit cart.”

“I used the cart that my overhead projector sat on,” Heaps explained. “Once I started selling fruit in my classroom and the kids knew, they kept coming to my room to buy it…I decided to take the fruit to them. I got some kids to help. We piled the fruit on the cart (we also had cheese sticks, granola bars, peanuts) and the kids pushed it around from room to room.”

Heaps said the parents of one of her students were local produce distributors and started delivering fresh fruit to her on Wednesdays. “My sister gave me a small refrigerator for my classroom so I could keep things cold. The fruit they delivered was awesome. They let me buy it at a discount so I was getting strawberries, blueberries, pears, all different kinds of apples. It was great.”

But Heaps made a mistake one day, taking the cart into the cafeteria during lunch. Federal rules forbid competing food being sold alongside the subsidized meal. “I had taken the Fruit Cart in the cafeteria because the kids wanted to have some fruit for lunch and the cafeteria either wasn’t selling any, or the fruit I had was so much better, the kids wanted it instead.” Then she sent an e-mail to the school staff–except the principal and assistant principal–in which she referred to the kichen workers as “evil lunch ladies.” Heaps said she meant it as a joke, but the gaffe was her undoing.

In a personnel memo dated May 1, 2009, principal Robert Mcmullen wrote, in part, “Your continued campaign has caused dusruption to the normal operatons of the district Food Serivce Director, district Finance Director, myself, your colleagues and the school…Therefore, I am issuing the following directive:

“You will support and treat all school and district personnel and departments with respect.

“You will include Mr. Westfall [assistant principal] and myself on all mass emails from or to school accounts.

“You will cease the fruit cart sales after the end of the school year.

“You will spend at least 15 minutes each day on lunch duty for the remainder of the 2009 school year. This will give you an opportunity to observe what our students are truly eating at lunch.

“You will bring me hard numbers regarding the percentages of EMS [Elizabeth Middle School] students who do eat hot lunches each day. These numbers will include both the full lunch as well as the pizza, Chick-Fil-A, Subway, etc. served in the hot line.

“You will meet with Susan Stevens, before the end of this school year, to better understand the realities of the economics of Elizabeth Food Services. Let me know when that meeting will take place and report to me your findings.

“You will bring to me the data showing the economic costs of eliminating the ‘Grab and Go’ line as you have proposed.

“You were hired to teach Language Arts. You will ensure that all your units, lessons and materials focus on the Language Arts standards and benchmarks.”

Heaps says she no longer teaches nutrition in her classes. But she does talk to her students about her husband and “how much our life changed when he got sick.”

“When I got the memo, everyone became afraid,” said Heaps. “If I tried to talk about the memo, no one wanted to listen. I got a little support from a couple of teachers, but not very much. Everyone wanted to forget about it and they wanted me to forget about it too…The only thing I still do is write letters and try to get someone interested! I’m working on one for Michelle Obama right now.”

D.C. Schools can't serve vegetables kids will eat

In a move that could signal a serious fault line in the argument for more vegetables as a tonic for childhood obesity, drafters of “Healthy Schools” legislation pending before the D.C. Council have skuttled a push for additional produce in school meals after school officials said they cannot guarantee their kitchens can prepare vegetables that kids will actually eat and not throw in the trash.

“More vegetables” has become a mantra of advocates for healthier school food, including first Lady Michell Obama, whose White House vegetable garden created a sensation. The “Healthy Schools” bill, scheduled to come up for a hearing next week, had embraced standards proposed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that would require larger servings of fruits, vegetables–especially green and organge vegetables and legumes–and whole grains as part of an upgraded school nutrition package designed to bring school meals in line with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The IOM panel that made the recommendations, working at the behest of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, warned, however, that requiring more produce and whole grains would drive up the cost of school meals, and that there could be no guarantee that children would eat them. The requirement for heftier vegetable servings was dropped from the “Healthy Schools” bill after D.C. school officials asserted they did not want to spend precious resources on food that would only end up being thrown away.

“We heard from many that if schools are serving mushy, flavorless green beans that students are simply throwing away, that doubling the portion size would simply double the amount of mushy, flavorless green beans that are thrown away,” said an aide to Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), author of the bill. “Instead, many have said that we should focus our energy and money first on improving the quality of the foods being served before we consider mandating an increase in portion sizes.”

Advocates of farm to school programs here and across the country contend that schools can serve meals that are more healthful and appealing by using more locally grown produce. But vegetables traditionally are a hard sell in school cafeterias. The foods most favored by children are pizza, all forms of potatoes and corn, in that order. As I found while spending a week in the kitchen of my daughter’s elementary school here in the District, vegetables typically are cooked to death and rejected by kids. A 1996 nationwide survey of school food service managers by the U.S. General Accounting Office revealed that 42 percent of cooked vegetables — and 30 percent of raw vegetables and salad — ended up in the trash.

The move to eliminate additional vegetables from “Healthy Schools” legislation suggests that mandating better school meals may not work without funding improvements to school kitchens. In fact, the trend in school food service for years has been in just the opposite direction–to reduce labor costs, which represent half of food service costs, by hiring less skilled kitchen workers who do not work enough hours to qualify for benefits. Frequently, school kitchens are staffed by “warmer-uppers” whose sole skill is being able to re-heat foods that have been pre-cooked in distant factories and shipped frozen. Sensitive perishables such as vegetables suffer as a result.

“If we’re going to win Michele Obama’s war on obesity and if her ‘Let’s Move’ campaign is going to be successful, then we need to ensure healthy delicious food. We need funds to pay for cooking kitchens, to train staff, and to market to kids to eat the food,” said Ann Cooper, noted school food activist and director of nutrition for schools in Boulder, Colorado.

“That seems like nonsense about kids not eating the veggies…of course they won’t if it looks and tastes like cardboard,” said Debra Eschmeyer, director of the National Farm to School Network. “Kids will eat fresh tasty veggies if they have a chance to access them and learn about them. I didn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes hundreds of times. Kids will eat chard, broccoli, beets, etc. and love it when they have a chance to grow it and have a real learning experience.”

The IOM report suggested there might be funds for school kitchen upgrades in the “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” (PDF) program instituted last year by USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan. Merrigan has said that nearly $1 billion in federal grant funds used in the past for building rural fire stations, hospitals and community centers could be allocated to food-related projects, such as building storage facilities for locally grown produce, food markets and school kitchens. But schools would need to apply for the money.

In a separate development yesterday, legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate would provide an additional 6 cents per school meal–something less than $500 million more annually–but that money would be contingent on federally-subsidized meal programs adopting the IOM standards. The School Nutrition Association, representing food service directors across the country, has asked for a minimum increase of  35 cents per meal. But others, such as Cooper, say anything less than $1 a day for each child in the program falls short of what is actually needed.

Still, the retooled “Healthy Schools” legislation sets forth substantial increases in local financial support for school meals, some of which could be used to purchase more vegetables and other healthful ingredients. The bill would provide an additional 10 cents for each breakfast served in D.C. public schools and 10 cents for each lunch, plus a bonus of 5 cents for lunches that include local produce. In addition, the District would fund 50 cents for students who qualify for reduced-price breakfast and lunch, meaning those students would not have to pay for their meals at all.

The bill also provides for construction of a local “super kitchen” where city schools could store and process local produce. The kitchen could also house a greenhouse, bakery or other features and provide a culinary training center.

Significantly, the “Healthy Schools” bill still does not identify funding to pay for the improvements it outlines, but Cheh has vowed to find it.

Is school food implicated in childhood obesity?

A new study from the University of Michigan finds that kids who eat the food served in schools are more likely to be overweight or obese than peers who bring lunch from home, and also are more likely to suffer from high levels of “bad” cholesterol.

The study, which examined the eating habits of some 1,300 Michigan sixth-graders over a three-year period, found that children who get their food at school eat more fat, drink more sugary sodas, and consume far fewer fruits and vegetables. The findings, presented last week at the American College of Cardiology annual scientific session, are said to be the first to assess the impact of school food on children’s eating behaviors and overall health.

Specifically, 38.8 percent of students who routinely eat school lunch were found to be overweight or obese, compared to 24.4 percent of kids who brought their own food from home. The children consuming school food were twice as likely to drink sodas, and a measly 16.3 percent reported eating fruits and vegetables on a regular basis, compared to 91.2 percent of the kids who got homemade food.

“This study confirms the current and escalating national concern with children’s health, and underscores the need to educate children about how to make healthy eating and lifestyle choices early on,” said Elizabeth Jackson, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System, in a release put out by the university. “Although this study doesn’t provide specific information on nutrient content of school lunches, it suggests there is a real opportunity to promote healthy behaviors and eating habits within the school environment. This is where kids spend a majority of their time.”

It would be dangerous to read too much into a study that is based solely on student questionnaires and suggests correlations, not cause and effect, between self-reported eating habits and specific health issues. For instance, it could be that children who tend to be overweight or obese must eat the food served at school because they get it free courtesy of the federally-subsidized school lunch program. The researchers acknowledge that there could be a correlation “between socioeconomic status and heart health in children of low-income families who take advantage of free school meal programs.”

The findings, based on what students reported about their eating habits during the entire day, not just at school, certainly suggest a strong link between what kids learn about food at home and the kinds of food they choose at school. But even parents who pack “healthful” lunches can never be sure what their children are actually eating, the researchers report, since most children in public schools are exposed to “competitive” foods — those sold outside the regular lunch line — that encompass all kinds of junk food, as well as the stuff sold in vending machines.

Amy Kalafa, producer of the food documentary Two Angry Moms, filmed herself having her eyes opened to her daughter’s true eating habits when she checked the computer records in the school cafeteria. “All our efforts at home were being undermined by the school,” Kalafa said yesterday. “When I casually asked for a readout, just to demonstrate how the system worked, I was genuinely shocked to learn that my daughter was regularly buying chips, fries, Rice Cispy treats and Pop Tarts.  And it’s not just about obesity.  Diabetes and sugar sensitivity runs in my family.”

My own 10-year-old daughter has noticeably put on some girth since switching last fall from home-made meals to the ones served in school here in the District of Columbia. Her pediatrician wasn’t at all surprised. Her kids gained 10 pounds, she said, when they started eating school meals. When my daughter heard that, she decided to switch back to taking her own food.

What’s more, only 7 percent of school food operations fully comply with the nutrtional standards laid down by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the federal meals program. During the week I spent recently in the kitchen at my daughter’s school, it was clear that schools trying to feed kids on a budget rely heavily on industrially-processed convenience foods laced with additives and sugar. Fresh vegetables are a rarity.

A study of how schools use government donations of surplus farm commodities, conducted by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (PFD) two years ago, found that California schools ordered far more meat and dairy products and rarely touched the offerings of fresh vegetables and whole grains. The reason is simple enough: kids don’t like vegetables and whole grains. Unless, of course, they’ve already been trained to like them at home.

The University of Michigan researchers said they are encouraged by a recent movement toward exposing children to fresh, local produce and programs that encourage children to walk to school and exercise more — just the sort of things being pushed by Michelle Obama in her “Let’s Move” campaign, as well as ”Healthy Schools” legislation pending here in the District of Columbia. The USDA also is considering new school food standards developed by the Institute of Medicine that would put a cap on the number of calories served in school meals, reduce starchy foods, and increase servings of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

The University of Michigan study comes as Congress considers re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act, for which President Barack Obama has proposed splitting an additional $1 billion annually between school meals and other food programs. Some advocates say that amount is not even enough to put an apple on kids’ cafeteria trays. Ann Cooper, the “renegade lunch lady,” in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, says what schools really need is another $1 per day for each child in the federal program, which would work out to something like $5.4 billion a year.

But this latest study points to something even more ominous that should occupy the attention of federal lawmakers: a growing bifurcation of the food system wherein poor kids are routinely subjected to cheap processed food that damages their health, while kids from wealthier families get access to the best our local farms have to offer. That is the underlying message of the growing Farm to School movement: that all kids deserve fresh, wholesome food, not just the ones whose parents shop at Whole Foods or the farmers market.

More studies like this one will undoubtedly show that school food quality is a social justice issue that demands immediate attention. And while some politicians might be loathe to pay for improving it — that is, if they think about it at all — it is also a health issue with potentially devastating consequences for the national budget.

Can you count the carbs in this meal?

Originally posted at the Better D.C. School Food blog.

Cheap carbohydrates are the favorite foods of school districts across the country. What’s wrong with carbs? Unlike protein and fat, carbohydrates turn into sugar (glucose) when you eat them, which signals the body to produce insulin. A powerful hormone, insulin is responsible for storing fat in the body and has been implicated in an all-too-familiar complex of modern diseases: obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis.

Teachers complain that kids are out of control after school meals. The high doses of sugar and other carbs could be an explanation. Kids gen an initial jolt of energy from this type of meal, but typically the body overcompensates with insulin: After eating so many carbs, you will soon be feeling lethargic and hungry again.

Consider this meal served last week at my daughter’s school. The entree is a highly-processed version of chicken nuggets, but you can’t see the chicken under all the breading (carbs). Next to the chicken nuggets is a big blob of sugary barbecue sauce for dipping (pure carbs). The baked beans are all starch (carbs) swimming in a sugary sauce (more carbs). The macaroni and cheese is mostly refined pasta (carbs).

So far, this meal is perfectly acceptable under the rules that govern the federally subsidized meal program. You’ve got protein in the chicken and a little bit of fat in the cheese, plenty of grain (no kidding) and legumes in the baked beans. Instead of a vegetable, we have fruit: a cup of diced peaches. Healthy, right? Well, maybe, if you don’t count all the sugar in those peaches (another jolt of carbs).

And as a beverage with this meal the kids were served orange juice rather than milk. I checked the ingredients on the carton. A 4-ounce serving contained 12 grams of sugar, about three teaspoons, or a little less, ounce-for-ounce, than Coca-Cola.

Truly, this meal is enough to send anyone’s blood sugar through the roof.

D.C. Schools COO, Anthony Tata

Anthony Tata, a former brigadier general and career Army officer in charge of procurement in Afghanistan, is the chief operating officer for D.C. Public Schools,  second in rank to chancellor Michelle Rhee. Tata was a close reader of our recent series of articles on the food served in D.C. schools–Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen–which questioned the highly processed and frequently sugary fare being served to children on a daily basis. Tata told The Washington Post that he is considering other options besides the school system’s current food provider, Chartwells. You  won’t find him disparaging Chartwells in this interview with The Slow Cook, except to say that school officials “are working with Chartwells to address concerns.”  Tata does say he is looking for ways to include more local produce in school meals and is considering a switch from highly-sweetened flavored milk. And there’s a new director of school food services on the scene who is particularly keen on school gardens.

Question: First, some background. Can you tell us what the situation was like for food services in D.C. Public Schools in 2007 when Ms. Rhee took office as chancellor? How was food being prepared at that time? 

Answer: The District ran all aspects of its food service operation “in house.”  Secondary schools provided fresh cooked meals.  However, elementary school meals were “pre-plated” and not cooked fresh on site.  The meals were packaged off-site by a third party vendor and delivered to schools where they were heated at the school by school staff.  The number one issue raised consistently by students was that the food did not taste good.  As a result, students did not eat the meals, and many meals went to waste. In addition, DCPS consistently lost money (over $30 million in the three years before the Chancellor’s arrival) due to low participation rates and paying for wasted meals.  Shortly after the Chancellor’s arrival, we began a pilot program to improve food quality at a handful of DCPS schools. 

Question: What was your vision for food services after taking office, and why did Chancellor Rhee elect to outsource, or contract, the food provider role for D.C. Public Schools? 

Answer: After careful analysis, DCPS determined it could improve the quality of food and reduce financial losses through contracting with an external company to manage food service operations.   In addition, the decision to contract for food service was based upon the idea that a school district’s core competencies lay in teaching and learning, not in some of the business essentials such as food service. Given the millions of dollars the program was losing, DCPS studied the problem and determined that finding a proven food services company to execute the program would save money and improve food quality, as it does in many large school districts. 

Question: How did you come to select Chartwells? 

Answer: Like any large contract action, we selected Chartwells through a competitive solicitation process.  DCPS publicized a request for proposals, received those proposals and selected a board to review them. The board used the pre-defined criteria to evaluate the proposals including overall contract cost, financial condition of the vendor, and proposed transition plan.  Additionally, there was a student taste testing with each of the possible vendors. The board chose Chartwells based upon its performance against the selected criteria and the taste testing. 

Question: What were your expectations from Chartwells as far as the type and quality of food they would provide? 

Answer: DCPS expects Chartwells to provide our students with nutritious food that adheres to USDA guidelines and tastes good, as specified in their contract with us.  We also expect that Chartwells work with us to implement the most cost effective food services program possible. 

Question: Until this year, schoolchildren were being fed prepackaged “warm-up” meals from a sub-contractor. Who was that sub-contractor and where were the meals being prepared? 

Answer: Middle schools and senior high schools were receiving fresh cooked meals every day and still do. Elementary schools were being served the prepackaged meals prepared by a company called Preferred Meal Systems, Inc. that had been involved in the district for years. Preferred Meal Systems, Inc. is headquartered in Berkeley, IL and the meals for DCPS were prepared in a Preferred Meal Systems, Inc. facility just outside of Laurel, Maryland. 

Question: Did you form any opinions about those prepackaged “warm-up” meals? 

Answer: The students’ opinion is what matters most, and as I visited schools and participated in taste tests with students, they believed we could do better than pre-packaged meals. 

Question: How was the decision reached to discontinue serving prepackaged warm-up meals and switch to something called “fresh cooking” or “fresh cooked”? 

Answer:  The students wanted better tasting food, and we believe fresh cooked meals taste better.  We began the process of converting all 76 elementary schools from prepackaged to fresh cook in August 2009. We completed that conversion in January 2010. Over the previous six months, we established six production sites at high schools and retrofitted the 76 elementary schools to be able to do basic kitchen functions required for fresh cook operations. 

Question: Were you at all surprised by the type of food and the food preparation at H.D. Cooke Elementary School as described in the series of blog posts that appeared recently in The Slow Cook blog? 

Answer: In 2009, DCPS began a full-scale analysis of the food service program and Chartwells operations in our schools.  The analysis is on going, and we are working with Chartwells to address concerns and continue to improve food services operations. 

Question: That series of blog posts described only conditions at one elementary school. Do you think that fairly depicted the food being served throughout the D.C.Public Schools system, or are there schools experiencing a different kind of food service? 

Answer: The food services program at each school is designed to be standardized.  That being said, there are logistical factors at each school that will differ.  Those factors include the size of the lunch periods, the physical structure of the cafeterias, and the experience of the staff. 

Question: Are you satisfied with the food being served in D.C. schools, or do you have something else in mind? 

Answer: We set a high bar for our students’ health, and I will most likely never be completely satisfied and always strive to do better.  That is why DCPS continuously strives to improve the nutritional quality and taste of the food we serve our students.  For months we have been developing new programs to increase participation and satisfaction rates among our students, including school gardens, breakfast in the classroom, and farm to school programs. 

Question: Besides the heavily processed nature of the food being served at H.D. Cooke Elementary, one of the things that made a particular impression on me was the amount of sugar being served in the meals there. Do you have any concerns about that, in light of the finding by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control that the District of Columbia has the highest rate of adolescent obesity in the nation? 

Answer: DCPS is concerned about the health and welfare of our students, including their sugar intake.  We are in the process of analyzing the food services program from all factors, one of which is the nutritional value of the food we serve, including the sugar content. 

Question: Some school districts have stopped serving flavored milks or are offering them to students only occasionally because of their high sugar content. Do you foresee anything like that happening in D.C. schools? 

Answer: Yes.  In fact, our Food Services staff are currently researching alternative milk products to flavored milk that are attractive to students but do not contain as much sugar. 

Question: Is it true that the job of food services director for D.C. Public Schools went unfilled for an entire year? If so, why was that? 

Answer: The position was vacant for most of the year during which time the Office of the Chief of Staff to the Chancellor, and later my office, effectively managed food service operations in all of our schools.  DCPS was committed to finding the best possible candidate to fill the position and took that time to conduct a national search for that person. 

Question: What, exactly are the responsibilities of the director of food services for DCPS? 

Answer: The responsibilities of the DCPS director of food services  include overseeing all food service providers to our schools, analyzing the operations of the food services program, and ensuring that DCPS students are provided high quality, nutritional food. 

Question: You recently hired Jeffrey Mills to fill the position of food services director. How did you happen to hire him, and could you briefly describe his background and qualifications for the job? 

Answer: Jeffrey Mills was hired after a national search for a food services director.  We had 107 applicants and performed 18 interviews, after which we chose Jeff due to his background in the food services industry and his demonstrated success in improving food quality and ability to effectively use resources.

Jeff has owned and operated restaurants and has served as a consultant to many hotel and restaurant groups.  He has the background in food service and the entrepreneurial spirit to improve the DCPS food service program while maintaining efficiency in its cost.

Question: What is Mr. Mills’ mission, and what is your vision for school food going forward? 

Answer: My vision for the food service program is to provide the highest quality foods to our students.  Jeff’s mission is to create a food service program at DCPS that parallels the best school food service programs in the country.

Question: The “Healthy Schools” bill currently pending before the D.C. Council calls for schools to use locally sourced farm goods in school meals “whenever possible.” How realistic is that? 

Answer: The term “whenever possible” to define the frequency of DCPS’ ability to serve locally grown and processed foods will vary based on many factors, including seasonal availability and cost.  That being said, I personally feel that using more locally sourced foods is a realistic goal for the future.  In fact, DCPS began researching our options in this regard prior to the proposal of the Act.

Question: We are constantly told that school food budgets are extremely tight, that schools typically have about $1 to spend on food per meal. Is that about right? How tight is it?

 Answer: Yes, the budget is always tight.  Our goal is to implement creative ways to increase quality and offerings while keeping costs low. 

Question: How much are budget considerations a factor in trying to reach the kind of food service that is envisioned in the “Healthy Schools” legislation?  

Answer: As a public organization, the costs of new program initiatives are always a factor in whether or not we can implement them.  As part of the analysis of our food services program that we began last year, we are analyzing the costs associated with various program improvements, some of which are included in the legislation, to determine which would be the most beneficial and fiscally responsible. 

Question: President Obama this week released his proposed budget, which includes an increase of about $1 billion annually in the Child Nutrition Act to be split between subsidized school meals and other food programs. That means an additional 18 cents, more or less, for each subsidized school meal, or less than the cost of an apple. Were you hoping for more? 

Answer: I am pleased with any increase, as it benefits the students.  

Question: The “Healthy Schools” bill calls for increased physical education, and actual physical activity, for children in Kindergarten through grade eight. Do you think that will interfere with children learning core subjects such as reading and math? 

Answer: Regardless of how the learning environment may change or expand, DCPS students will have the resources they need to continue their upward trend in core subject proficiency. 

Question: Finally, “Healthy Schools” calls on D.C. schools to embrace the idea of school gardens, to establish means for providing technical support to build gardens, to work gardens into the school curricula, as well as finding ways to teach children about the benefits of locally grown foods. Does all of that sound feasible to you? 

Answer: In the long term, yes, it is feasible.  In fact, one of the first initiatives that Jeff Mills mentioned to me when he was interviewing for the position of Director of Food Services was that he wanted to create community gardens for our students.  Since we hired Jeff, he has been researching possible methods to expand the school garden programs at DCPS and has begun building relationships with possible community partners.

To make school food healthy, Michelle Obama has a tall order

There’s been an impressive convergence of attention on school food recently, with “Healthy Schools” legislation introduced in the D.C. Council, then my series of blog posts, “Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen,” detailing the woeful food being served at my daughter’s elementary school, followed by the launch this week of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign against childhood obesity. The result: this piece I wrote for the Washington Post’s “Outlook” section, appearing today under the heading, “In D.C. school cafeterias, a long way from here to healthy.” It takes up a major portion of page two in the print addition. Or you can just read the text that follows.

First lady Michelle Obama’s new campaign against childhood obesity, dubbed “Let’s Move,” puts improvements to school food at the top of the agenda. Some 31 million children participate in federal school meal programs, Obama noted in announcing her initiative last week, “and what we don’t want is a situation where parents are taking all the right steps at home — and then their kids undo all that work with salty, fatty food in the school cafeteria,” she explained. “So let’s move to get healthier food into our nation’s schools.”

Last month I had a chance to see up close what all the school food fuss was about when I spent a week in the kitchen of my 10-year-old daughter’s public school, H.D. Cooke Elementary, in Northwest D.C. Chartwells, the company contracted by the city to provide meals to the District’s schools, had switched in the fall from serving warm-up meals prepackaged in a factory to food it called “fresh cooked,” and I couldn’t wait to chronicle in my food blog how my daughter’s school meals were being prepared from scratch.

It didn’t take long for disappointment to set in. It started on the first day, as I watched the school’s kitchen supervisor, Tiffany Whittington, prepare baked ziti.

First, she retrieved several five-pound bags of “beef crumbles,” grayish-brown bits of extruded meat and soy protein, from a walk-in freezer and loaded them into a commercial steamer. Curly egg noodles from dry storage went into the steamer next. Then she mixed everything with a six-pound can of pale-looking spaghetti sauce containing “dextrose/and or high-fructose corn syrup, potato or corn starch,” according to the label. As she stirred the concoction, she added pre-shredded mozzarella and cheddar cheese from five-pound bags. Whittington frequently adds cheese to the food for flavor, she said: “I think the kids really like it.”

The eggs I saw being cooked the next day weren’t much better. They also were flavored with cheddar cheese, but it looked more like cottage cheese. The scrambled eggs had been manufactured in a factory in Minnesota and shipped frozen to the District. Besides eggs, the dish contained many ingredients out of a food chemist’s manual — modified cornstarch, xanthan gum, liquid pepper extract, citric acid, lipolyzed butter oil and medium chain triglycerides. A few minutes in the steamer, and it was ready to serve.

When she took office in 2007, the District’s schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, opted to privatize food operations. “The mayor and I want to introduce students to a variety of foods to help train their palates to choose healthier foods for the rest of their lives,” Rhee said. The “fresh cooked” initiative was included in the city’s contract with Chartwells.

But from what I observed during my week in the kitchen at H.D. Cooke, “fresh cooked” does not mean “from scratch” or even “fresh ingredients.” Most meals are made from processed foods that have been precooked and frozen. They’re simply heated in the steamer or in a convection oven, since one of the things missing in the school’s tricked-out kitchen is a stove. Meal components have been designed to require minimal time and skill to prepare. It’s all part of an effort to squeeze school meals into tight local food budgets that hinge on federal subsidies.

Freshness and flavor are the first casualties. Fat is replaced with sugar as a go-to calorie booster. One of the most startling images from lunchtime at H.D. Cooke was the mad rush around the cooler where chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk is stored. Sodas have not been served in D.C. public schools since 2006, but the dairy products served rival soft drinks for sugar content.

I found the amount of sugar in the flavored milk astonishing. An eight-ounce (one-cup) carton of chocolate milk from Cloverland Dairy boasts 26 grams of sugar — about six teaspoons — only slightly less, ounce-for-ounce, than Classic Coke (27 grams). A similar serving of strawberry milk has more sugar still: 28 grams, putting it almost in the same league as Mountain Dew (31 grams).

In the breakfast line, strawberry-flavored Pop-Tarts were always on display. Along with a long list of additives, this 1.8-ounce processed pastry contains 16 grams of sugar, more than three teaspoons. Pepperidge Farm Giant Goldfish Grahams were another standard item. A 0.9-ounce serving contains six grams of sugar, or about 1 1/2 teaspoons.

Kids could also choose cereal. Kellogg’s chocolate-flavored Mini-Wheats Little Bites contain six grams of sugar in a one-ounce serving, according to the package. Kellogg’s Apple Jacks offer even more sugar: A 0.63-ounce serving delivers eight grams, or nearly two teaspoons.

Healthy-food advocates such as the first lady are convinced that more vegetables are key to breaking the cycle of starchy, sugary foods and obesity. “In my home, we weren’t rich,” Obama said as she recalled her youth during the “Let’s Move” launch event last week. “The foods we ate weren’t fancy. But there was always a vegetable on the plate. And we managed to lead a pretty healthy life.”

Obama said she had lined up Chartwells and several other national players to embrace new standards that call for more fruits, vegetables and whole grains in school meals, as well as less salt and sugar. And the Healthy Schools Act pending before the D.C. Council calls for increased servings of vegetables — and not just potatoes.

But as every parent knows, serving vegetables is one thing; getting kids to eat them is quite another. A 1996 nationwide survey of school cafeteria managers by the General Accounting Office found that, in student meals, 42 percent of cooked vegetables — and 30 percent of raw vegetables and salad — ended up in the trash.

The vegetables at H.D. Cooke were hardly more appealing. I watched the kitchen workers prepare a 25-pound bag of frozen broccoli, cauliflower and carrots in the steamer. The vegetables were gleaming when they came out of the bag. But after being cooked, the broccoli was limp and drab, and after an hour on the steam table, it had completely disintegrated, clinging to the cauliflower and carrots in little bits. As students came through the food line, Mattie Hall, one of the servers, called out: “Do you want vegetables? Do you want vegetables?” And the kids replied: “No! No! No! No!”

Hall, who is nearing retirement and remembers making school meals from scratch, said children will go to great lengths to avoid vegetables. Each morning she lines up 17 blue insulated bags on the serving counter and fills them with a snack of fruits or vegetables. Students arrive and carry the bags to their classrooms. They’re supposed to return them at the end of the day. But Hall said some don’t. They wait until the next morning, then show up at the last minute with their bags, knowing the vegetables have already been dispensed. Hall gives them bananas or apples instead.

When I asked my daughter about all this, she confirmed that where vegetables are concerned, the kids eat carrots, but not broccoli, zucchini or cucumbers. “They like to turn them into slush,” she said. “They step on them in the plastic bag.”

The Healthy Schools Act calls for serving minimally processed local produce “whenever possible,” as well as using school gardens to teach children the benefits of fresh produce. In the past year, a D.C. Farm to School Network has formed to push the idea of making school food more appealing and healthful — as well as to boost local agriculture — by incorporating locally grown goods. Having worked with kids in school gardens myself, and as a food-appreciation teacher in a private elementary school, I know it works. Kids will gladly eat lots of healthful foods, including vegetables, given a chance to help in the preparation.

The scenes I witnessed at H.D. Cooke reflect a culmination of decades-long trends that have converged in school cafeterias — industrialized food methods, meager school budgets and government policies run amok.

To reduce costs, schools opt for unskilled workers who don’t get enough hours to qualify for benefits. U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations permit schools to trade government donations of surplus farm goods for products full of chemical additives from giant processors. Meal items are designed at the factory to meet government nutrition standards but come out as barely palatable foods that do not occur in nature. Yet schools must induce children to eat the meals in order to qualify for the government subsidies they desperately need to keep their food operations afloat.

Federal payments — including $2.68 for each fully reimbursable lunch — total around $12 billion annually and feed roughly 31 million children every day, according to the USDA. That covers about half the cost of food service. Local governments pick up the rest.

For children in the 10 percent of D.C. households considered by the USDA to be “food insecure” — meaning they cannot afford a steady, healthful diet — school meals may be the best food they see all day. “Every day during the week, thousands of District children rely on public schools for their daily meals,” said D.C. Council member Mary Cheh, author of the Healthy Schools bill. “The school system can’t always control what children eat. But it is our responsibility to teach kids healthy habits and provide them with the most nutritious meals possible while they are in our care.”

It’s a laudable goal, and Michelle Obama’s star power may help Washington and other cities reach it, but it’s a super-size task. The Institute of Medicine, which authored the standards recommended by the first lady, says the new food requirements are certain to drive up the cost of school meals, even as school food advocates declare that President Obama’s proposed increase in funding for federal meal programs — $10 billion over 10 years — isn’t enough to add even an apple to students’ cafeteria trays.

A few days after my stint observing H.D. Cooke’s kitchen, I returned to the cafeteria during breakfast time. Many of the kids were eating sugar-glazed cookies called Crunchmania Cinnamon Buns, along with chocolate- or strawberry-flavored milk and grape juice. By my calculation, this breakfast contained 13 teaspoons of sugar — and this in a city that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention designated as having one of the highest levels of adolescent obesity in the nation.

For many food activists, schools hold out hope of a place where all children have a chance to eat fresh, wholesome food. But how do we get there from here?

Anthony Tata, chief operating officer for D.C. Public Schools

Bill Turque, education reporter for The Washington Post, reports in his online column, “D.C. Schools Insider” that schools Chief Operating Officer Anthony Tata is exploring a possible switch from current food provider Chartwells.

Chartwells is the company behind the six-part series I reported here after spending a week in the kitchen of my daughter’s elementary school and finding that the food was anything but the “fresh cooked” variety we’d been led to expect. Tata tells Turque that he read all of our dispatches in “Tales from a D.C. School Kitchen,” apparently with some interest. But according to Turque’s chronology, Tata in late December already had put out a “Request for Information” to food service providers who might be interested in stepping into the D.C. food provider role.

“I am trying to get best possible food service program for the kids in DCPS,” Tata told Turqe. “That may be with Chartwells, or that may be with some competitor.”

Writes Turque: ”The District’s contract with Chartwells is now in the first of a series of option years, and Tata says he is looking for an upgrade. A decision on whether to pursue an RFP (request for proposal) will be made sometime before the end of the school year.”

Chartwells, meanwhile, says it plans to be in the running.

According to the contract between the D.C. Public Schools and Chartwells, the food company was awarded $28 million to provide food for the city’s approximately 40,000 school children beginning in 2008. The contracted amount for the current year was $27.2 million.

As for The Slow Cook, Tata told Turque: ”I think it’s great a parent is super-involved and we are soliciting his input as we go forward with our program changes.”