On Feb. 7, 2013, the assessment of the FCPS school lunch program started, an assessment that will lay out a plan for FCPS to transition to a healthier school food program that features more fresh foods.
“They’re not giving us a report card,” Real Food for Kids co-founder and Marshall parent JoAnne Hammermaster said. “What they’re going to do is give us a road map, for probably 3-5 years. How do you transition from heat-and-serve to hopefully phasing in fresh food?”
Starting Sept. 2013, Marshall High School will act as the pilot for some of the proposed changes: fresh cooking, an open-air salad bar, soups and sandwiches.
The efforts of Real Food for Kids, a grassroot and primarily parent organization, have spurred FCPS into action. Hammermaster started the group while her younger son was still at Wolftrap Elementary School, in fall of 2010.
“We quickly learned that we couldn’t really impact the school food itself,” Hammermaster said. Soon afterwards the group of parents started what has become a long-term effort to overhaul the school system’s food. While FCPS meets USDA standards for healthy food, the food might not qualify as “fresh.”
“A lot of people don’t understand that the county brings in 100% of the food,” Hammermaster said. “They don’t make anything.”
While Hammermaster never allowed her kids to eat school lunch, she has sympathy for those who do not have that option. “I could probably count the number of times I’ve bought lunch since I started school,” freshman Olivia Hammermaster said, “and it’s not a very high number.”
“[Other parents] say, ‘Why are you doing this? Why don’t you just send your kids to school with their own lunch?,’ but you know, not everyone has that opportunity,” JoAnne Hammermaster said.
Real Food for Kids also started the Nutrition Club at Marshall, which has been pinned with the responsibility to collect student input on the project. “Our goal, I guess, is just to figure out what people want to eat, so that it’s not just parents’ input and then saying what they want kids to eat,” president Alisa Chirachatchurapk said, “but rather what we actually want to have.”
The Salad Competition was sponsored by Real Food for Kids and solicited students’ input on the salad bar. “We want kids to be a part of the change,” JoAnne Hammermaster said. “How cool would it be that they created this [salad] and it was actually served throughout the county to nearly 182,000 students?”
Not all students agree upon the need for changes to the school cuisine. “Everybody is always complaining about [school food], but it’s actually pretty nice,” senior Will Minor said.
While Marshall’s cafeteria will include a new serving bar with food made on-site, at the school, on-site cooking is not something Real Food for Kids foresees as a feasible option. Instead, the assessment will likely recommend a series of central kitchens that will make all the food fresh for FCPS. The meals made at the central kitchens will be transported to individual schools.
While the changes are not necessary according to the USDA’s requirements, Real Food for Kids emphasizes that they are necessary for healthier kids.
“Now they’ve come up with this term they’ve coined, the diebesity epidemic – epidemic,” JoAnne Hammermaster said. “If we don’t start now, when are we going to attack this problem?”