Essentials Magazine Essentials Fall 2016: EDspaces Edition | Page 11

In recent years many groups including: garden/local food/composting advocates; government organizations such
as the USDA, Let’s Move, and the EPA;
parent groups clamoring for better food;
and students storming board meetings
demanding better school food across the
country have all been focused on trying
to make school food better.
Clearly these groups are working
very hard to make an impact on children’s eating habits, but many students
are still unsure about where their foods
come from and how they should eat
healthy. Students at many schools are
eating mostly processed foods that they
end up throwing away (at least 40% of
what they take is being tossed into the
trash can, according to a food waste
study I did with the EPA in 2016).
Is there anything that can tie these
silos together to make real change happen in our school dining centers? The
ONE ingredient that can and will bring
all the silos into one congruent shared
vision is scratch cooking. Scratch cooking in schools is where it needs to start
in order to help students learn how to
make healthy food choices for life.
This may sound easy enough, but it is
not. The system is stacked against scratch
cooking. Commodity purchasing and the
reimbursable meal program (USDA)
make it nearly impossible to produce
good tasting, healthy meals. A majority
of schools rely on the reimbursable meal
program as well as the trend to fast, convenient, processed foods that so many of
us have become accustomed to.
My partners in sustainable school
food and I have worked in school
food environments nationwide for
many years. During this time, we have
learned that people simply need to
get back to the basics of cooking foods
from scratch (without being held hostage to commodity programs) in order
to make real change. Wholesome,
good-tasting food can be the catalyst
to make a difference throughout the
school and into the community.
We have developed a proven
process to achieve the goal of serving
fabulous school food in a sustainable
system. The following steps build
sustainable food systems that engage all
members of the school community.

STEP 1 - Assess Reality
To start the process, we need
to identify how a school currently
approaches its food service. Our
first step is to perform an assessment where we make on-site
observations and ask questions to
determine the current reality is in
the school.
STEP 2 – Determine the Vision
and Develop the Strategy
Once we know the lay of the
land, we then develop a vision for
the future. We meet with members of the kitchen staff, students,
parents, school administration,
and some community members to
determine what is important to the
school community as it pertains to
food, sustainability, and engagement. We find that it helpful to let
people vent their frustrations and
then let them talk about all that
they are trying to accomplish and
what they have already tried to
lead students to make healthy food
choices as well as be good stewards
of the earth. The feedback is used
to lay out a strategy with benchmarks, so there are clear outcomes
and quantifiable results.
STEP 3 – Implement the
Strategy and Engage the
School Community
Once the strategy is developed,
we make sure that all stakeholders
are in agreement. Then it’s time
to implement the strategy, engage
the school community and start
COOKING! It is critical to track
all data points so that progress can
be continuously measured. We also
identify where any funding may
be needed to improve the kitchen
equipment or facility. To be the
most effective in driving food and
sustainability education throughout
the school, we often suggest to our
school clients that they consider
hiring a green team coordinator to
lead these education initiatives.

SOURCE THE INGREDIENTS FIRST –
THEN BUILD THE MENU BASED
ON THOSE INGREDIENTS
Flavorful meals are the result of
fresh ingredients. Therefore, by determining which local ingredients are
in-season and best priced, it is possible
to source meal components that are
optimal for cooking great tasting meals
from scratch that students will love!
This way of planning is not a common
practice in many commercial kitchens
today. It takes time, preparation, and
lots of practice to get there, but once
this method is in place it leads to sourcing more local foods which taste better
than foods that have traveled great
distances. It’s no secret that eating
flavorful foods that taste great is more
enjoyable.
Once we establish our ingredient
base we can then plan the menu. When
the menu is built based on the ingredients, similarly to the way upscale
restaurants source seasonal ingredients
and build the menu, the result is better
tasting food.
We also believe in eliminating variety.
Let there be one fabulous entrée a day
that kids will eat, with a fantastic salad
bar, with homemade dressings, hard
boiled eggs, maybe even a ‘make your
own sandwich’, for those that don’t
want the entrée. Reducing variety and
waste will offset any additional funding
essentials | www.edmarket.org 11