School Lunch Daze

Business-government partnerships are bringing a slew of new choices, and controversy, to school cafeterias, but do kids benefit?

From: Newsweek

November 2, 2005

By Karen Springen

Wendy Griffiths packs healthy foods like applesauce and yogurt in the lunchboxes of her daughters, Eleri, 8, and Lili, 6. She often adds her own invention, "shish kebob fruit stick," which involves piercing melons, grapes, strawberries and apple pieces with toothpicks. She thought "it might make it more of a cool way to eat fruit." My oldest daughter, who sits next to Eleri at lunch, certainly thinks so. That's why I now find myself skewering chunks of fruit with toothpicks at 5 a.m.

That may seem extreme, but lunch is a big deal to parents, kids, the government—and corporate America. More children than ever are getting school-made meals or bringing pre-packaged lunches rather than brown-bagging it with homemade food. This year a typical U.S. 6- to 12-year-old will carry 41 lunches from home—down from 69 a decade ago, according to the NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based market research firm. And every day 54 million U.S. school children eat lunch. About 29 million of them participate in the National School Lunch Program, which costs the U.S. government $6 billion a year. (Of the 29 million kids, 14 million receive their lunch free and 3 million get it at a reduced price; the remaining 12 million pay for it.)

It's a big market, and the food industry has stepped in to provide a host of new options for parents and school systems. Food-service companies have made inroads into the school cafeteria market in an attempt to provide meals that are more nutritious, more in line with stricter government standards, and more interesting than the old lunch-lady-made "mystery meat" of yore.

But companies in the federal school lunch biz have to contend with strict nutritional and price restrictions. The federal government reimburses schools $2.32 for kids on the free-lunch program and $1.92 for kids on the reduced-price option. To subsidize healthy eating, the government also kicks in 22 cents per full-pay child, too.

That's not a lot of money with which to make inexpensive, mass-produced, healthy lunches that kids want to eat. And in an era in which more than 16 percent of kids are overweight or obese according to the Centers for Disease Control, there's ever more pressure for school lunch suppliers to provide healthy food. Since 1996, schools in the national lunch program have had to meet standards based on the Dietary Guidelines for Americans—no more than 30 percent of calories can come from fat and less than 10 percent from saturated fat. That means the peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches that were a staple at my own elementary cafeteria are hard to come by these days.

The trick for the government and its suppliers: "meeting the standards in a way that's appealing," says Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an advocacy group. And that's where the food industry has stepped in. "More and more school districts are outsourcing, absolutely," says Carolina Lobo, vice president of marketing for Aramark's K-12 program. A U.S. Centers for Disease Control study showed that management companies like Aramark, Sodexho and Compass ran 16.6 percent of school programs in 2000; today more than 25 percent do, estimates Lobo. In a 2004 survey of 800 high school students, Aramark found "some alarming trends, particularly among meal-skipping girls," who ended up going to the local 7-Eleven or Starbucks, she says.

To make the cafeteria more attractive to these girls and to everyone else, Aramark is re-designing cafeterias with "U.B.U." lounges. Instead of sloppy joes, Salisbury steaks and tuna casseroles ("those are out," says Lobo), they're giving kids the Italian, Mexican and chicken dishes they want. "These kids are so used to eating at the local Panera restaurant or going out with their folks at P.F. Chang's that when they want ethnic cuisine, they want it to be authentic," says Lobo. Aramark even uses white cartons that look like the ones at Chinese restaurants.

In its pilot programs, Aramark has found a 10- to 15-percent increase in the number of kids who participate in school lunches. Aramark is gradually rolling out its new program, now in 87 of the 420 school districts it services. It can even serve lunches in districts like Jacksonville, Fla., and New Haven, Conn., that don't always include on-site kitchens. To make healthy eating cool, Aramark also runs a child-targeted Web site called fuel4me.com. And it runs celebritylunchlady.com, which got celebrities like Aaron Carter and Gabrielle Union to talk about why healthy eating is important to them.

Schwan's, the leading maker of school pizza, has gotten on the healthy bandwagon. They recently switched to a lower-fat cheese topping. To improve the appeal to kids, who were ordering in from Domino's and Pizza Hut (about 30 percent of school districts have “open campus lunches”), they also introduced a Big Daddy pizza this year that kids can get in a 16-inch size in a box to share with friends. "It looks and feels like a take-out pizza," says Mike Gunderson of Schwan's.

Overall, kids who eat school lunches are getting healthier meals than those who bring their own, according to some research. An Eastern Michigan University study concluded that school-lunch students eat 29 percent fewer calories from fat and three times as many dairy products, twice as much fruit and seven times as many vegetables as students who bring home lunches. "Not only is it a nutritious option, it's a good value," says Erik Peterson, director of public awareness for the School Nutrition Association, a nonprofit group whose 55,000 members provide meals to school children. These days school pizzas are often made with low-fat cheese and whole-wheat crusts containing soy protein.

And food industry giants like Dole have partnered up with school systems to help parents provide alternatives to the sugary starchy foods kids crave. In California, the Dole Nutrition Institute is donating 50 full-service portable salad bars to K-12 schools. David Murdock, chairman of Westlake Village, Calif.-based Dole—the world's largest producer and marketer of fruits and vegetables—is on California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's advisory council on obesity.

Even Kraft’s Oscar Mayer Lunchables, the original pre-fab lunch for kids, is slimming down. Launched in 1988, with "viewing windows" and plastic trays, Lunchables are now a $650-million-a-year product, up from $310 million a decade ago. Nationwide, a typical Lunchable with a drink sells in supermarkets for about $2.49; a drink-free Lunchable sells for about $1.99. Calories range from a low of 210 to a high of 540, but the company just reformulated all the Lunchables to be lower in fat and calories and added a "Sensible Solutions" health-conscious line. "We're going to work toward improving nutritionals and keeping it fun for kids," says Nick Meriggioli, a Kraft senior vice president.

In some cases, schools are trying to lure kids away from the whole idea of a processed food by introducing them to local farm produce. In Santa Fe, N.M., Le Adams, the Farm to School program director of a nonprofit group called Farm to Table, brings fresh fruits, like northern New Mexico apples, to different schools for a healthy snack program. "Many younger kids really don't know where their food comes from," says Adams.

One big slice of the school food market is not subject to up-to-date federal school nutrition standards: vending machines. Soft drink, candy and salty snack vending machines are called "competitive food," and many schools have financial agreements with the Coca-Cola Co. or Pepsico. A 2000 survey by the Centers for Disease Control found that 43 percent of elementary schools, 89.4 percent of middle schools and 98.2 percent of senior high schools had either a vending machine or a school store or snack bar where students could purchase competitive foods.

Schools typically get to keep 15 to 20 cents for every $1 sold out of the vending machine, according to Richard I. Wyckoff, president of Aramark Refreshment Services, the biggest provider of school vending machines. But nutrition advocates like Margot Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, say the schools aren't really making that much money. "A lot of this isn't even new money, it's money that's been shifted from the school cafeteria to the vending machines," she says. "Parents expect that their child is going to buy a balanced school meal, but instead many children are going to the vending machine and making Flamin’ Cheetos and a Coke for lunch."

Some parents and advocacy groups are trying to either remove these machines or put healthier products in them. In September, Gov. Schwarzenegger created new rules that ban soda in California schools and limit the amount of fat allowed in a la carte lunch items. And under these new rules before the next academic year, every district needs to make a "wellness policy" and decide whether to allow products like Coke and Pizza Hut in their schools. "The vending machine will probably turn out to be the low-hanging fruit," says Weill. If they stay, vending machines are likely to include foods like raisins, trail mix and milk.

For some parents, just getting their kids to eat any lunch is a triumph. According to KRC Research's 2004 Lunchroom Monitor Survey of 1,000 moms and 1,000 kids ages 8 to 12, 73 percent of kids are throwing out part of their lunches at least once a week, and 36 percent are trading them. Robyn Smelter of Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., has her own tactic to make sure her children eat in the middle of the day. She participates in a carpool-like lunch system with two other moms who take turns dropping off fresh foods like burritos and Subway sandwiches for their kids.

That may seem like a lot of work, but with so many kids on a packed schedule, the need to fuel up at lunchtime is more important than ever. Smelter's children barely eat in the morning because they catch their bus before 7 a.m., and they head straight to sports like football and baseball after school—sometimes not returning until just before dinner. She wants to make sure they have a substantial lunch: "I remember throwing my lunch away."