-Blog post by Reed Sandridge of Washington, DC.
One in three children in the U.S. is overweight or obese according to the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. Pressure is growing on strapped for cash school systems to provide healthier meals. D.C. Public Schools has implemented a salad bar system this year and asked for volunteers to help teach students how to make a healthy salad that complies with USDA requirements for school meals.
I signed up to help out at Ballou Senior High School. Named after former D.C. superintendent of schools Dr. Frank W. Ballou, the school is located southeast of the Anacostia River and has a student body of about 1,000, nearly all of them eligible for free and reduced lunch. I parked my car in the almost empty lot next to the football field and walked up the hill toward the school passing several parked police cars. A friendly smile greeted me as the front door opened and a uniformed security guard motioned toward an airport like security checkpoint. After collecting my camera and the contents of my pockets from the other side of the x-ray machine, the same woman explained to me how to get to the cafeteria.
Ballou's salad bar minutes before students flood the cafeteria. (photo: Reed Sandridge)
I made my way across the empty dimly lit cafeteria and poked my head in the kitchen. A dozen school cafeteria employees, mostly women, were busy making last-minute preparations for the second day of the school year. I was directed to Mr. Sparrow, a thirty-year veteran of the food service industry. He explained the task at hand and I, along with another volunteer named Hale, got ready for the first wave of students.
“It aint going to be easy,” Mr. Sparrow told me. “You’ve got to make sure they have a balanced meal that includes vegetables, a protein, a fruit and a grain.” Sounds easy enough, right?
Although most students chose the standard school meal, probably about 60 or 70 lined up to make a salad. Freshly prepared that morning, the salad bar looked delicious. Although students could choose from fresh romaine, arugula and endive, most stuck with the standard romaine lettuce. Zucchini sticks weren’t very popular either, despite my sales pitch to the young people. Turkey ham, eggs, bacon bits and ranch dressing were the hot items.
This young man made the healthiest salad I saw all day - all on his own! (photo: Reed Sandridge)
“Sir,” called out Mr. Sparrow to an upperclassmen dressed in the standard blue shirt and beige pants, “I need you to take a piece of fruit with you.” The student pushed back some saying that he wasn’t going to eat it. In the end he reluctantly grabbed a shiny red delicious apple and went on his way. This type of scenario played out about half the time. Sometimes they were missing fruit, other times they had loaded up on just meat and almost nothing else. Stern yet compassionate, Sparrow and his team work with the students to get it right. I secretly wondered where they found the patience to do this every single day.
An altercation erupts in the cafeteria courtyard and the half-dozen police officers on hand in the cafeteria quickly defuse it. The experienced kitchen staff is unphased; just another day.
Mr. Sparrow (right) gives some coaching to the students on their salad preparation. (photo: Reed Sandridge)
Overall it was a good experience. It had been a while since I had been in a school cafeteria. Although I applaud Ballou and DC Public Schools for taking on this initiative, I believe they will need additional help to make this work properly. Just keeping the salad bar looking presentable is a full-time job for one worker who was busy restocking and cleaning up spilled toppings. They need someone for the foreseeable future helping students build a healthy lunch. As students head back to school tomorrow, the volunteers won’t be there anymore and I am afraid Mr. Sparrow and his team will be stretched too thin.
Check out this video that DC Public Schools put together to help volunteers learn how to build salads that qualify under USDA guidelines as a school meal. I thought it was pretty good!
Here is a link to some other photographs that I took. I will have more uploaded later this week.
Year of Giving 
I think it’s a complicated issue. You are not only dealing with what the kids like as opposed to what they don’t like for food, you are dealing with what they get to eat at home. If there isn’t much food at home, which could be the case if they are all eligible for reduced price lunches, they may be eager to get the proteins that they aren’t getting elsewhere, so they are trying to load up on meat and eggs instead of lettuce and zucchini or egg plant. Also, it should come as no surprise that zucchini and eggplant sticks are not foods that will be chosen by kids. Many adults don’t like these tasteless items. Find a way to make them more palatable. Marinate them in something that provides
some flavor before setting them out on the lunch line. You can have food police stand at the end of the cafeteria line and force kids to choose more carrot sticks or a piece of fruit. That doesn’t mean it will get eaten. It does mean food will be wasted and money spent where it shouldn’t go. When these programs are developed, they need to incldue kids in order to find foods which will taste good to kids. Everything I read seems to be about forcing things on kids that they don’t want. Find things kids do want or find a way to make foods they currently don’t like more palatable so they will choose them volun tarily. There have been some interesting programs done here where I licve that are making a difference. The key is you have to involve the kids – not treat them as prisoners in a prison lunch line, forced to take food they hate. Everyone ends up unhappy and good food and hard to get money gets wasted.
Shirley, I used to work in this field and I didn’t want to get too wonky on it, but you are absolutely right….this is a very complex issue. There are lots of challenges and I have yet to find anyone who has an easy solution for it. I enjoyed my day there and despite a handful of eye-opening moments, it was extremely beneficial to the students – and me! – Reed
Sorry about the typing above. For some reason, I couldn’t see what I was typing when it was being typied, so couldn’t see typos until after the email had been sent!
The salad bar looks and sounds very healthy. I am glad it is now an option. Perhaps Mr. Sparrow and his staff could place a graphic above the bar to illustrate the portions to make a beneficial meal. Goodness knows a lot of what they serve on the hot lunch line, although within government standards, is not healthy. A chart showing a good salad might help?
I am incredibly passionate about feeding our kids well and have always made their lunch. We are pretty tight on money, and at one point with all 5 kids at home, may have qualified for free lunches, but we made it a point to send them to school with what we knew they would eat and was good for them. From what I have seen volunteering at their schools kids will throw away a lot of their meal and only eat the “good” stuff [high in fat, sugars and sodium.]
Nice job Reed.
A graphic is a good suggestion. Mr Sparrow does have a few sample salads that he assembles and places at the salad bar so that the students can see a healthy example. Due to limited space it is located on top of the bar with some additional signage, however, it might get a little overlooked.
As for your comment on items getting thrown away, I am sure you are right. I remember being forced to take a milk when I was in school and I didn’t like milk much so I always gave it or threw it away.
I agree there’s no simple answer. But I doubt forcing kids to go back and take an apple they have already said they aren’t going to eat is beneficial to anyone. I’d bet if you followed the kids to the place where they turn in their trays in a week or so you will find them dumping the stuff they hate but have been forced to put on their trays. Food police are not the answer. Finding a way to get the kids to buy in is the answer. Making them part of the solution is the answer. There was a program here where they brought in a chef and made nutrition p[art of the class. They had hands-on demonstrations of making healthy, TASTY food. Then, they brought parents in and gave everyone a healthy, free dinner, parents and children. And gave parents a variety of herbs to take home which were donated from a local greenhouse to take home to help add flavor to healthy foods. That has to be followed up in the school cafeteria by presenting foods to the kids that are tasty. You need kids to be part of the decision making when it comes to menus so they devise things they are going to like, and will eat. YOu train your cafeteria staff better so they know how to produce foods that taste good to kids. Food police are not the answer… make the kids part of the answer, or else you can just follow them as they dump their healthy but tasteless food into the
trash can.
This is for the parent who talked about sending lunches to school. Great idea.. Especially the comment you made about sending things you knew your kids would eat. There are ways to make food that is healthy more palatable. Instead of throwing some foods that kids generally don’t like on a plate, do something else to the food to make it tastier. For example, my grandson will eat most anything if it’s got some hot sauce on it. And he discovered he loves vegetables he thought he hated if they are grilled. Instead of turning meal time into a battle where kids are forced to eatsomething they don’t like, or at least take it and put it on their tray, turn mealtime into a time that’s enjoyable and satisfying both for the staff and for the kids. Just takes some thought. There IS a way to do it.
It is great that some schools are doing this. Even if we get a few kids to switch to one healthy meal each day, something HUGE could happen- other than a huge waist.