McCain’s and Dole have partnered with Alliance for a Healthier Generation to bring healthier meals to a Florida school district.
PENSACOLA, Fla.—It is said that the longest journey begins with a single step. With respect to the challenge of childhood obesity, the journey to a healthier generation begins with a single school district.
In this case, the district is Escambia County, a 60-school district with some 40,000 students in Pensacola, Fla. Prior to the current school year, foodservice employees benefited from a training program created by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation in partnership with two food manufacturers, McCain’s and Dole.
The Alliance is a joint initiative of the American Heart Association and The William J. Clinton Foundation to fight childhood obesity. The Alliance works to promote healthier lifestyles for Americans through diet and exercise, and is currently involved in relationships with 230 schools. McCain’s and Dole are signatories to the Alliance’s Memorandum of Understanding regarding nutritional guidelines for competitive foods sold in schools.
“McCain wanted to do a demonstration program in schools around healthier à la carte foods and their impact on revenue and student acceptance,” said Lisa Lampel Link, competitive foods and beverage manager for the Alliance.
“We felt like their goals and our objectives were fairly well aligned,” explained Don Moos, senior director, foodservice marketing potatoes, for McCain’s. “We started talking about districts where we felt we could make a difference, as well as districts where they were already using McCain products.” From a short list of districts, the partnership settled on Escambia County.
Link noted that Dole approached the Alliance later with a similar request and was integrated into the McCain project.
“There is a lot of lip service out there about getting more health on the menu, and we wanted to make something happen,” said Stuart McAllister, director of marketing for Dole Packaged Foods. “We wanted to help districts that were looking for new ways to use fruits and vegetables as ingredients.”
At the outset, the members of the partnership had the idea that the project was going to be about changing menus and marketing food. Once they visited the schools, however, they realized that the focus was going to have to be as much on staff training as it would be menu development.
“We had viewed the project as being about changing menus on the à la carte line,” said Moos. “What we found was that while the district had some stellar objectives in mind, they hadn’t made it down to the serving line. What we saw told us we had to get students engaged; we had to get staff engaged.”
So the partnership took a two-pronged approach to the project. They conducted surveys and focus groups with students to learn what their opinion of the food and what they were looking for in terms of nutrition, and they created a two-day staff training program that was conducted before the start of the 2008-09 school year.
It was this training that, thus far, has had the biggest impact on the district, according to Jaleena Wortham, R.D., supervisory dietitian for the school district.
“The training was a big deal because a lot of employees thought they couldn’t make a difference,” said Wortham. “They thought students would never eat healthier foods, but the focus groups showed us that students would eat those things if they were prepared properly and merchandised effectively. So we set about teaching staff how to prepare quality foods.”
About one third of the district’s foodservice workers went through the training. The classes were arranged so employees from different schools worked together. Employees weren’t paired with their managers, so they would feel freer to express opinions. The sessions focused on everything from preparation and marketing to food handling and storage.
“The biggest challenge going in to this was the past,” said McCain’s Moos. “People who had done things one way for a very long time struggled to make the changes we’ve talked about.”
“They loved the training,” said Wortham. “They feel more a part of the team and they are taking more pride in their work, experimenting with recipes to try to reduce fat and sodium, decorating the serving linesand understanding the importance of marketing foods.”
A number of menu items have been changed as a result of the training, and staff have learned new ways to use sauces, herbs and other flavorings to make items more appealing to students. But one practical application centered on portion control, in the form of a fry boat. “One of our chefs came in with a fry boat, and you think, ‘well, everybody uses fry boats,’” said Moos. “But the container was perfect for a one-half cup measure.”
Wortham added that the fry boats were a big hit. “It allowed us to control portion size and it still looks like a lot of food to the students because the container is smaller [than what was previously used].”
No one involved in the program is under the illusion that the project is anything more than a first step toward a very sizeable goal.
“This was a big learning curve on our part,” said Dole’s McAllister. “We have identified areas for improvement and staff morale has improved. But we know it will be a very long process to increase meal counts and satisfy kids.”
Wortham noted that she believes it will be at least five years before the district sees any meaningful impact from the program in terms of healthier, and slimmer, children. But all parties will continue to look for ways to make a difference here and in other districts across the country.
“We saw some tangible outcomes,” said the Alliance’s Link. “We learned so much about the operation of a system. We saw some very typical issues: storage, menu planning, procurement, maintenance. This helped us develop a strategic plan that will be usable in other systems.”
McCain’s acknowledged both the opportunity and the challenge of enabling a healthier generation.
“I see us continuing to build relationships in a very holistic manner,” said Moos. “The product, the training, the support, all done in the best way possible, to provide food that is nutritional—it tastes good and gets eaten. An easy equation to say, a hard thing to do.”
And in Escambia, the goal will be to maintain momentum.
“This summer we are going to try to do our own training, similar to what the Alliance did last year,” said Wortham. “We will be tweaking recipes, trying new, healthier products and getting more versatile equipment.”