Posted Dec 18 2009
Students in the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district have started to eat more locally grown food.
The district’s “Farm to School” initiative aims to bring more corn, squash, wild rice and other fresh foods from local farmers to the menu. The goal is to teach kids where their food comes from and try to get them to eat more fruits and vegetables while supporting local farmers.
For now, the district’s 30 schools will serve local food once a month, said Barbara Griffiths, a food and nutrition supervisor. So far, students have enjoyed corn-on-the-cob, grass-fed beef hot dogs and butternut squash. Tuesday is the next local lunch day, and kids will try acorn squash, one of eight varieties students are learning about.
The district kicked off the initiative before the school year began, when the Minnesota School Nutrition Association encouraged all Minnesota schools to use more local foods, Griffiths said. Willmar and Little Falls are among the districts serving more local food this year.
“We feel that if children can associate looking at and tasting the food, then any information about the food and what the food does for their body, helps them,” said Wendy Knight, coordinator of food and nutrition services. “It brings the classroom into the cafeteria.”
One challenge is getting such large orders of food into the lunchroom. Griffiths said smaller districts can order directly from farmers, but larger districts, like Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan, which
“serves about 86 percent of its 27,500 students daily,” work with food distributors.
And some products require additional preparation the cooks and kitchens can’t handle. For example, the district’s vendor worked with another company that peeled the squash and took the seeds out, Knight said. The schools then received chunks of fresh squash that could be baked.
The more the district plans ahead, the easier it is to include locally produced foods on the menu, Griffiths said. The schools already have Minnesota-produced cheese coming in January and wild rice in February.
The district hopes to expand the initiative by offering more locally grown food in future years but started small because of the newness of the project and the cost involved.
The fresh corn served in September, for instance, cost 30 percent more than frozen corn, and the grass-fed beef hot dogs cost about twice as much as the hot dogs served previously. But, Griffiths said, because the size of the district allows it to order food in large volumes, it gets something of a savings.
However, the nutritional and educational values to the students outweigh the increased cost, Knight said. Education has come into play through posters and display tables in the cafeterias that feature eight varieties of squash and explain how the squash can be used in students’ diets.
“We’re participating because we want to offer the students fresh food and want to get away from lots of processed foods,” Knight said. “It brings it to their level, tells them what’s in it for them and the benefits that food can provide for their body.”
Date: Dec 10, 2009 To see more of the Pioneer Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.twincities.com.
Copyright © 2009, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
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