Kids like healthful food, Gig Harbor district finds
BRENT CHAMPACO; Staff writer
Sophia Gregg snacked on a zesty taco wrap during her lunch break at Harbor Heights Elementary School in Gig Harbor.
It might not sound much different from the thousands of other lunches served every day in school cafeterias across the country, but the 11-year-old wasn’t eating a normal school meal. Her wrap came with black beans, salad and milk.
She and the 600 other students at Harbor Heights and Discovery elementary schools are being served a more healthful menu designed to increase fiber, limit salt and rein in sugar.
“I hope they keep it,” Sophia said Friday between bites.
The Peninsula School District is testing the menu for three weeks. Officials say it’s been such a hit after the first week, they plan to serve it next year in all eight elementary schools.
“We chose elementary schools for a number of reasons,” said Paul Schneider, chairman of the local committee that’s guiding the program, funded by a grant. “One reason is the kids are more teachable. They are more willing to change their eating habits.”
The healthful menu is part of an $80,000 federal grant that YMCA of Pierce and Kitsap Counties and the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department received in 2008 to make communities healthier. It includes developing ways to help reduce heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, arthritis and childhood obesity.
Officials from Harbor Heights and Discovery were members of the committee that proposed the nutrition education component of the grant, which is why they were chosen as test schools.
Peninsula’s new lunch menu goes “above and beyond” standards set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said Sid Taylor, the school district’s director of child nutrition.
Students won’t find food that is processed, excessively sweet or filled with preservatives. Among the entrees are pasta, chicken parmesan and sloppy Joes. Students can also pick a deli sandwich. All meals come with vegetables, fruit and milk.
Students at the two test campuses won’t find cafeteria staples such as hot dogs, hamburgers, pretzels with cheese, or even chocolate milk.
The reasons schools have stuck to those foods over the generations, according to Taylor, are cost, simplicity and tradition.
“The typical lunch programs were modeling what fast-food restaurants were doing,” he said.
Typically, the Harbor Heights kitchen prepares meals for about 240 students each day, less than half of its student population. Last week, the count grew to 355 meals a day.
Schneider said schools can recoup the costs of more healthful fare if more families agree to buy the lunches.
The retired physician said school is the only opportunity for some kids to have a nutritional meal during the day.
The Tacoma School District will also benefit from the federal money, but it has yet to try the new menu, he said.
Bitsy Hatteberg – the mother of two Harbor Heights students, Sophia, 10, and Ella, 6 – said neither girl liked the school lunches before last week.
“They didn’t like the look of the lunches. They didn’t like the smell of the lunches,” she said Friday. “They’ve bought lunch every day this week.”
Vanessa Sawyer, whose son Danny, 9, attends Harbor Heights, said the program can help him develop good eating habits.
“It’s going to stick with them right through adulthood,” she said.
Brent Champaco: 253-597-8653
brent.champaco@thenewstribune.com
