School lunches have evolved quite a bit at Tonawanda High School from the days of sloppy Joes and fat-drenched, deep-fried foods.
Increasingly, students are being offered healthier lunch choices, such as turkey hot dogs instead of regular hot dogs; brown rather than white rice and wheat rolls instead of white. There also are more fresh fruit and vegetable options and the deli bar features low-sodium turkey.
“I think that school districts are seeing that if students eat healthier, they’re more apt to learn,” said Tonawanda High School Food Service Manager Wendy Doster, of Sodexo, the company that handles the district’s food service operations.
Senior Jeremy MacKay has noticed a difference over the years. “It’s pretty good. There’s more of a selection,” he said. “For a dollar, it’s not terrible.”
The move toward healthier meal choices means the kitchen deep fryer is pretty lonely these days. “We fry very, very little,” Doster said. “The only thing that we actually deep fry is the French fries that are served in the a la carte program in the high school. Everything else is baked. We couldn’t deep fry something and then have it fit nutritionally into the program. It just wouldn’t work.”
Over the years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the state Education Department have cracked down on school meals, implementing guidelines that require that students have better food choices at lunch. Those efforts were expanded this school year, when the USDA mandated that school meals contain more fiber and less salt.
“They used to monitor those, but it wasn’t something they held us strictly accountable for, and now they are,” said Doster, who has been at Tonawanda for six years and with Sodexo for 25. “It was the total fat and the saturated fat and the calories.”
Schools such as Tonawanda, which participate in the National School Lunch Program, must follow certain guidelines in order to receive reimbursement.
In September, the program mandated that school meals contain at least 8 grams of fiber and no more than 1,200 milligrams of sodium, Doster said, adding that Tonawanda’s meals average 8.13 grams and 1,179 milligrams respectively.
Cutting salt out of the meals isn’t easy, Doster said. “It’s very difficult to get under that sodium. With the government program, we get a lot of canned vegetables,” she said. “They’re giving us all these canned products, but then they’re saying your sodium has to be under a certain amount.”
In addition to providing healthier options, Tonawanda High School is keeping up with the “green” movement. Last year, Tonawanda went to the “Xpress Napkins” program, which cut its napkins usage in half, Doster said. “I was just amazed,” she said. The napkins are in a holder that allows kids to take only one or two napkins at a time.
Cafeteria staff also recently began using Apex cleaning products from Ecolab.
Junior Danielle Primiano and friends Monica Muszynski and Amanda Van Hise said the tacos, Buffalo chicken wraps and grilled cheese are among their favorite items, but the chicken patties and hamburgers aren’t so good.
“They should have more salads and stuff every day,” Primiano said. “A salad bar would be so cool,” Van Hise added.
It wasn’t that long ago that salad bars were unheard of in a school cafeteria, but today’s students are a little more particular over what they want. “They’ve become connoisseurs. They know what they like and what they want, especially in the middle school and high school,” Doster said.
As a result, Tonawanda now offers more Asian and Mexican cuisine choices. Friday, they’ll serve up Cuban pork sandwiches. “I don’t expect it to go over well, but it’s just something that’s a little different and that the might not have been exposed to in the past,” Doster said.
“Students expect way more from their school food service than in the past. It’s more than chicken nuggets and pizza.”
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