At These Public Schools, Cafeteria Food Is Healthy, Tasty—and Locavore
School cafeteria food gets a bad rap. But the truth is, as the national farm to school movement has taken off over the past few years, schools have begun sourcing the sort of high-quality ingredients you see at your local farmers' market. At public school lunch rooms around the country, it’s now possible to taste dishes like shrimp cocktail (with homemade cocktail sauce), grass-fed burgers with roasted potatoes, and burrito bowls with local veggies and antibiotic-free chicken. Realizing how vital farm-to-school programs are to local economies, state governments from Alaska to Texas are encouraging regional purchasing, in some cases doling out grants to districts that want to buy more local and regional food.
The Obama administration has stepped up its support, hiring a director of farm-to-school at the United States Department of Agriculture and, last fall, allocating $4.5 million in grants to 68 projects that connect school cafeterias with local agricultural producers. In fact, according to just-released Census figures from the USDA, 38,629 schools across the U.S. are buying local food and teaching kids where their food comes from. And then there are nonprofits like FoodCorps, which deploys idealistic young service members—125 of them at last count—to 15 states to teach kids about healthy food, instruct them in gardening and cooking, and help school food directors get more local food into schools (including, sometimes, the very produce kids grow themselves).
Since October is National Farm to School Month, we decided to showcase some of the yummiest locally sourced cafeteria meals out there. We bet you'll take a second look at your kid's cafeteria—and maybe even join her for lunch some day soon.
1/7Wenatchee, Washington
Most of the produce served in the Wenatchee School District (14 schools, 7,800 students) is grown within 35 miles of the city, which happens to be based in the agriculturally rich Wenatchee Valley. Yet because director of food services Kent Getzin buys directly from growers, he says he pays less for local produce than what he’d pay a big-box vendor. To make things pan out financially, he'll serve commodity items such as teriyaki "dippers" (a beef patty shaped like a chicken nugget), but pair them with egg fried rice, stir-fried local zucchini and cabbage, and a salad bar featuring local carrots and spinach.
Kelly Campbell2/7Kalispell, Montana
Except for the spinach, everything you see in this meal—Polish sausage, roasted root vegetables, spinach salad, apple, apple crisp—was grown or produced in Montana. Kalispell food service director Jenny Montague has been sourcing local food for the past few years, but it wasn’t until FoodCorps service members Katie Wheeler and Lea Howe came to town that she began sourcing 100% grass-fed beef from Montana-raised cows. Now grass-fed hamburgers appear every day at the high school cafeterias (less often at middle and elementary schools). The sausages—made by Lower Valley Meats of local grass-fed beef and pork—are a hit with kids, too. (Photo by Kelly Campbell)
3/7Portland, Oregon
Portland Public Schools, which feeds roughly 20,000 students a day, launched “Harvest of the Month” in 2007, featuring an Oregon-grown fruit or vegetable on the menu twice a month. Today, 32% of the food served in Portland cafeterias is regionally sourced—and nutrition services director Gitta Grether-Sweeney plans on increasing it even more with the help of two recent grants, one from the USDA. This is a typical meal of homemade pizza with whole-wheat crust (made from wheat harvested by Shepherd’s Grain cooperative in Washington), multi-hued cauliflower (this year from a farm in Northern California), and a Hood River pear.
4/7Jackson, Tennessee
Four years ago, long-time Jackson-Madison school food service director Susan Johnson did something radical: She auctioned off the deep fryers at all 27 school kitchens. Now, instead of french fries, kids are getting baked sweet potato fries and other healthier foods—some of it local, like this corn-on-the cob. Whole wheat wraps come with low-sodium ham and Bibb lettuce that's grown at Liberty Tech High School's hydroponic greenhouse. According to Johnson, the kids aren't balking, perhaps due to the nutrition education lessons they're getting in the classroom. "They're eating so many more fruits and vegetables," says Johnson. "We're just really thrilled."
Elizabeth Cecil5/7Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
On Martha's Vineyard, local nonprofit Island Grown Initiative has joined with parents, teachers, farmers, and cafeteria directors to plant school gardens, renovate and modernize dated kitchens, and increase the amount of island-grown food on school menus. At West Tisbury School, which got a brand-new kitchen two years ago thanks to the hard labor of skilled parent volunteers, mom and head cook Jenny DeVivo makes a fantastic fish chowder (made with sea bass caught off of Lambert's Cove Beach), which she pairs with greens from the school's greenhouse, orange slices—not local—and pita bread. (Credit: Elizabeth Cecil)
Peter Fois6/7New York City
Chef Jorge Collazo has his hands full: New York City SchoolFood serves over half a million lunches a day, making it by far the largest school district in the country. Yet over the past few years, with the help of Grow to Learn, roughly 70 schools have begun sourcing local veggies for their salad bars. How? Each school has its own garden—be it hydroponic, a grow box, or a rooftop garden like this one at The Earth School (a.k.a. P.S. 364), ____ which serves kale, carrots, red peppers, and cucumbers. District-wide, all 1,700 schools get New York State apples as well as regionally made yogurt.
7/7Minneapolis, Minnesota
Since becoming director of school food in 2012, Bertrand Weber has been shaking things up at Minneapolis Public Schools. His first massive undertaking? To convert all 62 schools plus the central kitchen (serving a total of 21,250 lunches a day) to scratch-cooking. Weber has also forged relationships with small, sustainable growers and has launched a “True Food” campaign (October’s True Food is cauliflower, November’s the chickpea) as well as a “market cart” salad-bar program. These Asian turkey burgers with sesame slaw (the birds are from a family-run farm in Cannon Falls, Minnesota) appear regularly on the menu, as do roasted butternut squash and red potatoes.
