Columbia Public Schools is continuing to fine-tune its lunch program as it adjusts to federal food program guidelines added over the past three years.
Laina Fullum, the school district’s director of nutrition services, and her staff are making some menu changes in an effort to stop making students take larger portions than they want to eat.
“We’re going to make some adaptations to make sure we aren’t forcing them to take things they don’t like,” Fullum said.
New federal guidelines have made serving food to students a challenge, she said. The revised federal meal regulations have been in place three years and the Smart Snack guidelines for one year. Standards include more vegetables, fruit and whole-grain foods and limits on calories, saturated fat and trans fat in meals.
For the first couple of years the regulations were in place, 2012-14, CPS’ food services department lost money — $636,000 and $800,600, respectively. Fullum said the department is not expecting to lose money when the 2014-15 school year numbers are finalized.
The district will make small menu changes this year in an attempt to give students more of what they want while meeting the federal requirements, hoping to reduce waste and sell more.
One menu change means saying goodbye to spinach across the district.
“Kids like broccoli, and they don’t have a problem eating lettuce,” Fullum said.
But students don’t eat spinach, she said. Instead of spinach this year, students will have other dark leafy greens to choose from, which satisfies federal requirements.
And CPS will take chicken out of its macaroni and cheese. Federal regulations require students have a certain amount of meat or meat alternates, which include cheese.
To meet that requirement, the district tried adding more cheese to the macaroni, but doing so exceeded fat and sodium limitations.
Schools started serving chicken in the macaroni and cheese to satisfy the meat requirement without adding more cheese, but Fullum said students didn’t like it. This year, schools will take chicken out of the dish and add another meat alternate to the menu on those days.