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Video Transcripts

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: Why More Fruits and Vegetables?

Derek: Here’s the thing. Kids who eat breakfast do better in school, go to school more often, and have way more energy for fun and play. So that’s why taking a look at breakfast as the place to eat right just makes sense. And kicking off the day with a good start means a breakfast filled with colorful, great-tasting fruits and vegetables. Why? Eating fruits and vegetables is fun, easy, and they taste great. You guys know that for kids to keep fit and feeling good, they need to eat five-to-nine fruits and vegetables servings a day. That’s five-to-nine! That’s gonna take breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, the way I see it. Good health habits start early in life, so when learning to love those fruits and vegetables, the earlier, the better. With your help, kids just need the opportunity and encouragement to say YES to breakfast and YES to all this!

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: What’s Your Style? – Breakfast Bar or Buffet

It’s easy to get kids eating more fruits and vegetables at a breakfast bar or buffet. Once you’ve considered the age groups you serve, preparation facilities, food safety, and staffing, there are lots of ways to serve more fruits and vegetables at breakfast. You can increase consumption of fruits and vegetables by giving kids lots of choices. Kids love making their own choices. Yes, choices, choices, choices. Take advantage of how easy it is to display fruits and vegetables beautifully in different color combinations and as garnishes on a breakfast bar or buffet. Also, whole produce can be creatively displayed at varying heights on the bar, and even cut differently, like in stars, to add interest and dimension. Create a breakfast promotion. Breakfast bars lend themselves to thematic displays. These are really fun ways to entice kids, and you can use the displays again and again. Ethnic or cultural recipes and seasonal promotions of specific fruits and vegetables are fun, so let your imagination go. Get students involved in choosing the theme, and the fruits and vegetables that go with it. Maximize your resources by mixing lower-cost fruits and veggies with more expensive ones. Remember, students love choices. You can even promote salads on a late-morning breakfast bar. Many schools, from elementary to high school, are finding that by serving breakfast in a salad bar setup, no additional labor is needed, prep work is manageable, and their students are enjoying more and more fruits and vegetables at breakfast.

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: What’s Your Style? – Grab ‘N Go

Speed and convenience are a big priority for some schools. Grab ‘n go breakfasts may be a simple answer. It’s easy to increase the amounts of fruits and vegetables offered, whether they are whole or cut. Grab ‘n go breakfasts can also be served as a second chance breakfast at nutrition break, which is another opportunity for a serving of fruits or vegetables. The flexibility of the grab ‘n go breakfast helps you add more produce because it increases participation in your program, which means more students are eating fruits and vegetables. It’s an easy way to add hand-held fruit to a meal where students may not have been getting a serving of fruits or vegetables before. It’s convenient for staff because it takes less time to prepare than most traditional breakfast meals and for students because long lines are eliminated. The grab ‘n go service style makes it easy to include a variety of fruits and vegetables in the menu, like whole fruits, packaged veggie sticks, or potato and egg burritos. Cut fruits and vegetables may be packaged in see-through containers so they are visually appealing.

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: What’s Your Style? – Breakfast in the Classroom

With breakfast in the classroom, all children are given breakfast, so it’s a great way to introduce a variety of new fruits and vegetables to all students in a safe and encouraging environment. Prepackaged items keep it easy to distribute, deliver, and clean up breakfast in the classroom. Ideally, students will see others trying new fruits and vegetables, and they’ll want to try them, too. The individual packaging makes it easy to mix fruits together in a serving. The fruit looks delicious and students end up branching out by trying new ones. This is a great way to serve fruits that may be new to kids, such as plums, kiwis, and tangerines. Students can save uneaten fruits or vegetables from breakfast for a treat anytime of the day, and this eliminates waste. An added bonus is teachers have an opportunity to augment what students are eating with a little nutrition education, and we know that the more students are exposed to fruits and vegetables, the more likely they are to enjoy eating them. Students will want and expect fruits and vegetables at breakfast when a breakfast service is naturally woven into the regular morning routine.

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: What’s Your Style? – Traditional

A traditional plated breakfast served in a cafeteria before school offers different opportunities for introducing a variety of fruits and vegetables to students. For schools with on-site kitchens, there is no need for special transportation or packaging foods, so it’s easy to replenish fruits and vegetables on the spot. Adding fruits and vegetables to hot breakfast item plates, like eggs, waffles, pancakes, and oatmeal, combines fruits and vegetables with other popular breakfast items. And placing fruits and vegetables at the beginning of the line encourages students to take them.

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: What’s Your Style? – Produce Stand

A new piece of equipment on the market is a produce stand, made for food service operations who want the look of a fruit stand with the ease of commercial food service equipment. The produce stand is popular with students, because it mimics a roadside produce stand or grocery store. Perhaps a school art class could create fruit and veggie posters, to add their own flair to the stand. If you have a produce stand, you can store fruits and vegetables in bins or packaged individual servings. The stand can be rolled next to the meal service, so students purchasing a meal have an opportunity to try the produce. And the stand can even highlight some of the produce growing in the school garden. The produce stand concept could be a spinoff for academic course work in economics, social sciences, nutrition, agricultural literacy, and art. You’ll have no problem enhancing the visual appeal of fruits and vegetables and highlighting choices for students. Both secondary and elementary school staff find this is a great way for students to choose more fruits and vegetables at breakfast.

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: What’s Your Style? – Vending

A newer alternative at secondary schools is breakfast served in vending machines. These convenient breakfasts allow students to eat anytime, and they allow you to provide breakfast even when no staff is there. Because vending machines can offer a full breakfast meal, as well as breakfast meal components, many of the same serving suggestions for other breakfast styles may be used in refrigerated vending machines. What’s most important is to make high-quality selections that are attractive and eye catching. Freshness of the produce is critical, so everything needs to be dated and rotated regularly. Vending machines are an easy way to promote nutritious breakfast options, such as fresh fruit cups, cottage cheese with fruit, yogurt and fruit combinations, celery sticks and peanut butter, carrot sticks and dip, bagel, cream cheese, and tomatoes, and of course, whole fruit options. By packaging meals or items in see-through containers so they are visually appealing, and combining a bright variety of color combinations, produce will sell easily. When using a vending style of breakfast service, it’s a great idea to have a system in place for students to provide feedback about the selection and how to improve the system. That way you’ll know even more about which fruits and vegetables your kids want to eat.

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: Bright Ideas from Others – Lynelle Grumbles

Lynelle: All those kids out there are your kids and my kids. And it’s up to us as school nutrition professionals to provide healthy meals for them each and every day when they come to school. In order to improve their health, one of the best things that we can do is to encourage them to eat more fruits and vegetables, and breakfast is the perfect time to do that.

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: Bright Ideas from Others – Lucia Bonila

Lucia: I’ve been in food services for 17 years now, and I have found in my experience that if you offer fresh fruits and vegetables to your students, they will make wise choices. We have a lot of vegans at our school, and they’re very happy that we’re offering these things now. I encourage them to eat breakfast every morning. Not only does it help them to concentrate better in school and get better test scores, but breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and I try to encourage the students to do these things. But I’m very surprised that they do it on their own. They ask for these things, and they’re very happy. So, I encourage you to offer these to your students, and you’ll be surprised at what they’ll choose.

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: Bright Ideas from Others – Paul Idsvoog

Paul: One of the issues that we had when I first came to the district was how to better utilize farm-to-school, and with the size of our district, the biggest issue that we had was distribution and how we could better use the purchasing end of it. We aren’t able to call a hundred different local farmers in regards to how to handle all those calls. We need to centralize our distribution process. So what we did is we planned and worked with our local distributors, and worked with them to be the co-op for the local grower, and really looking for a win-win for both sides. And in the process, we were able to actually increase our produce consumption by about eighty percent, and being able to utilize a lot of different kinds of vegetables and fruits that we were not able to use before.

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: Bright Ideas from Others – Sue Horn

Sue: We have decided in our district to do something really fun and different. So I developed what we call “The Pit Stop Café,” and it’s based on a race car theme, which really brings the kids into the cafeteria for breakfast time. We were able with our breakfast grant to purchase some equipment that would allow us to do some packaging of fresh fruits and vegetables and present it to the kids in a really fun way. And put them out on display so that the kids really wanted to take them, rather than just having a basket of apples or oranges. So what we found was sometimes it’s just about getting the kids all excited about a new idea. And we are seeing a more positive turn, and the kids are eating more fresh fruits and vegetables.

Module 1: New Horizon for School Breakfast
Page: Bright Ideas from Others – Karen Mo

Karen: As a family physician and a PTA president at one of our local elementary schools, I feel that nutrition education is a very important piece of our children’s lives. At our school, in particular, we do have a very active garden program. We also do a program where they tour some of the local organic farms. When they go out and taste and see new vegetables and new fruits, it makes them want to try new things, and it really is very important for their health for them to try new fruits and vegetables. A piece of this that has been very beneficial, I think, is that they even then go home and ask their parents to buy them more fresh fruits and vegetables, and so everyone’s health in the family is improved.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: The Pot of Gold

Farmer: It’s a new horizon for more fresh fruits and vegetables at breakfast. Today there’s an array of fresh fruits and vegetables available throughout the school year. Our children are now able to enjoy healthy fresh fruits and vegetables not only during lunch, but during a healthy school breakfast as well. What better way to start a student’s day than with tasty, colorful fruits and veggies in a rainbow of choices? Lots of innovative and creative school nutrition personnel are leading the way into a healthier new era for our kids. One such exemplary person is Director of Student Nutrition Services, Rafaelita Curva, or RC as she is known to many, at the Davis Joint Unified School District. She and her staff have reinvented themselves with one main goal in mind: her determination to get a delicious and nutritious variety of fresh fruits and vegetables on the plates of her students has paid off! One of the ways her district was able to meet their goals was by concentrating labor at a central kitchen. All receiving, storing, and preparation of fresh produce happens at this one location, in order to maximize their ability to serve an abundant variety of produce. Her kitchen managers all gather at the central kitchen each morning to assist in the prep and division of produce. Then, they each transport it to their individual sites for breakfast and lunch service. The process is efficient and saves the district a lot of money on their other facilities. More money to purchase and promote fresh produce for students! RC has a good relationship with a produce vendor that she trusts and relies on to obtain current supplies and quality produce. Jan Burkett, of Piranha Produce, communicates regularly with RC. They discuss the district’s purchasing options, what her kitchen managers should know about upcoming cycles, and possible deals she can get on specific produce. Jan and her drivers work with RC to accommodate the district’s specific needs for receiving produce. Another vehicle for RC’s success is her association with local farmers, like me. Many directors throughout California are developing relationships with local farmers, many of which are at the community farmers’ market, and the regional community alliance with family farmers, known as CALF. RC has maximized her ability to purchase everything fresh and in season. She also took advantage of her setup at a central kitchen, which allows for single deliveries from local farmers and vendors. RC’s managers are taking the freshest, most delicious variety of California-grown produce back to each of their schools for students to enjoy. One of the main reasons that work of RC and her staff is supported is that through their efforts, they have been able to increase student participation in their breakfast program by over forty percent in just the last year. Yes, truly a pot of gold. More students enjoying more fresh fruits and vegetables and a community invested in their children’s health and wellness by using resources effectively, developing relationships with local farmers, relying on good vendors to support her menu planning, and making her efforts known to the community, Rafaelita Curva has made a name for herself in school nutrition services. And because of this, the children of today are able to enjoy fresh, in-season fruits and vegetables every day.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Solve the Seasonal Mystery – Mary Tolen-Davi

Mary: In our district, we’ve really taken a fairly simple approach to breakfast and increasing our fruit consumption at that time. We use our garden bar from lunch, and we place a variety of fresh fruits in that bar. They look very attractive, and we’ve found that we all really eat with our eyes, so color and appeal, making the arrangement of fruit attractive, is what really encourages students to select and consume the fruit. When we serve the apples we put out a variety of red, green, yellow, we throw in tangerines, whatever might be in season. And we’ve found that actually it’s very simple. If we have maybe a little bit of fruit left over from lunch the day before, we put it out at breakfast, because it increases the variety and choices that kids have to make. We were able to add fruit to our breakfast menu without really making any major changes. We didn’t add labor, we didn’t need to purchase new equipment, we utilized what we had. And through a creative arrangement of foods on the garden bar, we were able to offer a great variety of choices at breakfast. So I want to encourage everyone to really try this. It’s simpler than it sounds, and it’s really a great opportunity for kids.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Solve the Seasonal Mystery – Robert Schram

Robert: Part of our program is the farm-to-school program, and what we do is we work with local farmers in our community to make this program a success. We went out and found farmers who were willing to package food and to bring it to us. The advantage to the farm-to-school program is when the food comes in, it’s picked that day or the day before, versus getting a piece of fruit that’s been packaged and sitting in a storage facility for up to 30 days, we have fruit that comes right from the trees. In doing that, the students really think, “Wow! This is really what an orange is supposed to taste like!” Because it’s picked, literally, the day before or that day and brought directly to our site, where it’s consumed by the child. One of the first things you need to do if you’re gonna try and work with the local farmers is you have to have standards, and you have to let them know what the standards are gonna be. There’s gonna be standards of quality of product, how the product will become packed, what the pricing’s gonna be…You’ll probably want to go out and see the farm, ask them how they’re gonna handle sanitation, are they gonna pick it themselves? Do they have pickers that are gonna pick it? And when will you receive it? So you need to ensure that your farmer’s a reliable source of produce. And you wanna go out to the farm and you wanna say, “Hey, is this really gonna work for my student population?” After doing that, you’ll know once you see the farm whether they have good standards or bad standards. And that’ll be our next step to ensure that we have safe food delivered to the classroom, and it’s the best possible produce we can get for our students.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Solve the Seasonal Mystery – Jeff Davidson

Jeff: It was about three, three and a half years ago, we looked at overall food services at Sanger Unified and decided we were serving way too much juice. So we started thinking out of the box, and we went and started talking to local farmers, asking them, “Can we get fruit from you?” How can we buy it? Were there packing houses we could buy it from? If we had such a high volume that one or two farmers couldn’t handle our fresh fruit demands daily. So we started knocking on packing houses’ doors. And we found that we can buy fresh, locally grown produce from six to eight cents apiece. So what we did at that point was we made arrangements to where our food service trucks could pick up from the local packing houses fresh fruit twice a week. So we implemented that. And we started out with oranges. We started going from what we normally would serve one case of oranges in a five-day period in the high school to 60 cases of oranges. And then we’d go to 120 cases of oranges. Then we’d go to 200 cases of oranges weekly. Then we implemented another packing house, we started getting fresh apples. And then we started going through 70, 80, 90, 100 cases of fresh apples. And the buy-in from the students was phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. We used to put a bowl of fresh fruit out, and we’d probably sell, out of 50 pieces we’d sell 10. Now we put a bowl in each classroom. And each classroom that does breakfast in the class has fresh fruit, and any leftover fruit that the kids have they put back in the bowl and it’s offered to other children. And our breakfast in the class was successful, we put it into breakfast in the cafeteria. And we found out we had to get salad bars just to hold the fruit, because so much fruit was going. I attribute most of that participation to the buy-in the students have and the fresh fruit that has brought those children into the cafeteria.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Sleuth the Sources – Direct Path – Annie Thomas

Annie: Some ideas about working with farmers like me for your school food service program would be one, to make a really good chain of communication. To be very clear in what your needs are to a farmer. Farmers think in terms of total size and production of crops. They don’t necessarily think of size as servings, and that a serving actually represents a child on the cafeteria line. Farmers think in terms of weight, not necessarily in volume, so you do need to do a little training with them on that. You can take advantage of some great last-minute deals, especially with farmers, because a lot of times we’ll pack out our crop, and we won’t know exactly where our size profiles are going. And quite often, we’ll end up with a lot smaller fruit than what we’d care to admit to. And that’s a perfect outlet for schools. So if you can have some flexibility with your menu planning to take advantage of these last-minute opportunities, you’ll get some great fruit at some great pricing. For those farmers that don’t have a commercial packing outlet available to them, be sure that you are very clear with them on your quality standards. A child isn’t going to take a piece of fruit that shows bruising or weird discoloration on it. The farmer may think that’s great, but you fully well know that’s not going to fly on the cafeteria line.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Sleuth the Sources – Direct Path – Robert Ramming

Robert: We have tours. We try to have a tour every week from April and May. We have kids in here from second grade, even university kids come through. And they pick a basket of strawberries, we give an age-appropriate tour, walk around the farm a bit, explain how we do things organically and about water, the soil. Why it’s important to eat fresh produce, because that’s what we grow here, and everybody goes away with, hopefully, a basket of strawberries for most of them to make it home. We’ve got melons, watermelons, the strawberry field right behind you there. These are all things that can go to the school. There’s not too many kids that’ll turn down a good cantaloupe or a good watermelon. Twelve months out of the year you can get fresh fruit for local consumption. We do a lot of tours with schools, come out here in the spring from Woodland, Davis, even as far away as the Bay Area. And the kids get a chance to see that lettuce does not come from the store, that it can grow here. What a strawberry plant looks like, what a tomato plant looks like, or even a watermelon plant. So we really enjoy doing tours, and we cooperate with CALF on the school tours, they have their farm-to-school program as well where they try and get local food into the schools.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Sleuth the Sources – Direct Path – Randii MacNear

Randii: The farmers’ markets in California and all over the United States can serve as a great resource for school food service directors in a number of capacities. There are some food service directors who have been known to come directly to the farmers’ market and develop the relationships. They know all the farmers, they know what they grow, they know the types of personalities of the farmers, which can be very helpful as to what will be a successful sourcing relationship and what is not. Other things a farmers’ market can do in the education community is that they can actually go into the schools and do cooking demonstrations, tastings…Many farmers’ markets have a great tour program for school-age kids, so there’s quite a bit of programming out there that farmers’ markets are very anxious to connect with school food service directors.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Sleuth the Sources – Distributors Path – Jan Burkett

Jan: When dealing with a specialty distributor, the relationship is key. It’s imperative. It’s so important to know your produce distributor. Your produce distributor can do so much for you. She can tell you about seasonality, she can tell you about pack sizes, we go over the pricing with you. It’s just extremely important to communicate with your produce distributor. We send out weekly produce updates, tell you what’s happening out in the fields with the weather. That is all very important, and you need to know that for your program. It’s also valuable information that you can pass on to educate your staff. They need to know why the price of oranges has skyrocketed, or why the price of tangerines has come down to a very inexpensive price. And so communication is definitely, definitely the key. Another thing you want to keep in mind is food safety. When you’re looking for a produce vendor, you want to ask them what kind of food safety precautions they have in place. Do they have a HACEP program in place? Do they have a recall in place if they should need to recall some sort of product? And keep your staff informed of this also. Another thing you want to know about is whether or not your produce distributor can give handling and training of produce seminars for your staff. It’s important that they know how to handle the produce. It needs to be handled very carefully, it needs to be refrigerated, it needs to be put away as soon as the order is received, and so having this in a seminar is very important, and your produce company should provide that for you.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: It Takes Two

(phone ringing)
Jerry: Jerry’s Produce.
Lydia: Hi Jerry, how are you?
Jerry: Great. What can I do for you?
Lydia: Remember that idea I was talking to you about? Serving breakfast for the summer school meal?
Jerry: Yeah.
Lydia: Well, I just got approval from my business manager, and I’m ready to start menu planning for the first month of summer school. I was hoping to try some new produce items.
Jerry: Sure. Let’s start with stone fruit. I don’t think you have that on the menu.
Lydia: Well, I spent some time reviewing the specs, and I think I have an idea of what I’d like to try. Let’s start with nectarines. What can you tell me about availability?
Jerry: Most of my schools try to purchase locally grown. Would you like to do the same for the summer?
Lydia: I think so, but I still need to consider price. Since this is breakfast, my serving size is half a cup of fruit or vegetable each day.
Jerry: Most of my schools use yellow nectarine, which is more common and less expensive than the white nectarines. They generally choose 88 or 96 count to meet the requirement.
Lydia: Okay. And what varieties will you have available during August?
Jerry: At the beginning of August, we usually start with Red Gem, and then we move over to Summer Bright. At the end of the summer, August Red becomes available. These three varieties are all yellow nectarines with red skin. Most of my schools use these because they’re all local, and kids don’t seem to see the difference between them.
Lydia: Uh-huh. What about price? Will it fluctuate with the change in varieties?
Jerry: Well, because it’s the same farmer, I can get a consistent price for all three varieties. Would you like me to work up a quote for you?
Lydia: Sure. See what the price would be. Okay, let’s move on to plums.
Jerry: Plums are gonna run a few more pennies per serving than the nectarines. But you know what? I’ll try to work up a price within your budget.
Lydia: Okay, Jerry. I want to start with either blue or purple-skin varieties. These are more common. Oh, I forgot to mention, I still want all the quotes based on fruit that is to be packed to US Number One Grade.
Jerry: Will do. Now let’s see, for half a cup of fruit, we’re gonna need to use two-inch medium, with a count of five to six plums per pound.
Lydia: Would I get a better price if I waited until midseason to put plums on the menu?
Jerry: Actually, plums are available for a longer growing season than nectarines. So your first month of summer school is midseason.
Lydia: Okay. Well, I’ll plan to put them on the menu. If I can get a good price.
Jerry: Sounds good. Maybe I can find a local grower with a large crop since it’s been a good year.
Lydia: Great Jerry. Sounds like a plan. So next time let’s talk about pears, peaches…

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Calculating Matters – When to Order

Okay, I’ll talk to you next week. Bye. Okay, finally I’ve got some quiet time to prepare next week’s produce order. Let’s see. I need to begin with the breakfast menu for next week. I’ll start with strawberries and plums from my produce vendor, and then avocado from my local farmer. The strawberries are locally grown and once I get them in, I need to remember I’ve got a two-day window to serve them. So if the strawberries and plums come in the day before service, I can serve strawberries on Tuesday, and let the plums ripen and serve them by the end of the week. Here we go. My vendor told me the price difference between the different counts for plums, and the varieties in season now. So let me look at that, and I can…

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Calculating Matters – Determining Amounts to Order & Calculating the Figures

Okay. First, I need to check to see how the strawberries will be packed. All fruits and vegetables are packed in standard containers and weights, and each fruit or vegetable may have two or even three standard packs. They could be flats, or half flats, or cartons, or lugs…I know where to check this out: Fruits and Vegetables Galore. Or maybe the PMA Buying Guide, because they spell out the different standard packs. I can also use my buying guide to determine the number of servings and different portion sizes that can come from a specific standard pack for a specific fruit or vegetable. My vendor says the standard pack for strawberries is the 12-pound flat. So, how many half-cup edible portion servings will be in that one 12-pound flat? Hmm…I’m going to be serving whole berries. Let’s see, under strawberries, the first entry in column one of buying guide is strawberries, fresh, whole. Great. Now, I need to check on the purchase unit, or column two. I have a choice of pint or pound. The entry for pounds is a match for my purchase unit, because I’m buying 12-pound flats. 10.5 quarter-cup servings for every pound. I’m serving a half-cup serving, twice the serving size of the quarter-cup, so I need to make the conversion. My conversion factor is .5. 10.5 servings times .5 equals 5.25 half-cup servings. Right. Okay. So how many flats do I need? Well, 12 pounds times the number of servings I get per pound, 5.25, is 63. So, I get 63 half-cup servings per flat. Now, to serve 1200 students, if I take 1200, divide it by 63, I get 19 flats. I’ll order one extra flat just to be safe. I know how much our kids love those strawberries. Plus, this will cover any waste. There. That looks good.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Calculating Matters – Ordering What Students Want

Next, I need to include plums in my order. I want to include at least two varieties so that students are likely to find something they like. Red and purple plums would best complement the colors of foods on this breakfast menu. Oh right. I have here that my manager Joe told me that the kids are preferring purple plums to red, two-to-one. It’s amazing how preferences change each year. So, let’s go for more of the purples. He also said they like them best whole, so let’s see. I’ll go for the 138-count, which is a perfect size for serving whole. Okay, what else? Ah, I’ve got to remember tomatoes and onions. He told me that the new breakfast burrito with the fresh salsa was a big hit with the kids, too.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Calculating Matters – Serving Sizes for Ordering

Let’s see. What else do I need to order? Avocado, that’s right, I’ll need that for the new menu item, the breakfast burrito with potato, eggs, and cheese. The potato will count as a quarter-cup serving, and I’ll be serving salsa and avocado on the side, which will each count for an eighth-cup. That gets me to a half-cup altogether, meeting my requirement. On my worksheet, I have the servings per pound already calculated. Let me look that up. Here it is. I’ll get 16.4 eighth-cup servings for every pound of avocados. My avocados come in a two-layer, 25-pound pack, and each case will provide 410 servings per case. So, for 1200 eighth-cup servings I’ll take 1200, and divide it by 410, that gets me 2.9, and since I always round up, that’s 3 cases of avocados. Now I just need to contact my local farmer, place my order, and remind him of the degree of ripeness for these avocados.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Bright Ideas from Others – Nancy Benoit

Nancy: In our district, one of the strategies that we utilized was to take a price point on fresh fruits. We added fresh fruits to our breakfast menu, which we weren’t able to do before, and by using a price point we’re able to offer a wider variety of fresh fruits and vegetables to our students, and they are able to be exposed to more things that they may not be exposed to. For example, in the summer, usually one or two weeks we’re able to give the students strawberries. They love those. And this week we have kiwi, which they also like, which kind of surprised me at first. And during the summer we offer quite a few different types of melons, which are very, very popular as well. We have done some data research on our program since we started Fresh Start, and we took baseline data against after we started the program, and the fresh fruit consumption in our district has increased dramatically.

Module 2: Rainbow of Seasonal Choices
Page: Bright Ideas from Others – Nadine Haynes

Nadine: One of the fresh promotions we’ve done at breakfast is to bring the farm-to-school program to life in our school district. We’ll invite a local farmer, purchase his local produce. One of the latest items that we purchased is Asian pears. Asian pears are a fun fruit. They’re juicy, as you bite into them they run down your arm, they’re a lot of fun for the kids to try. But the biggest part of the promotion, which was free to us, was to get the farmer on board. And having him on board made 100% of the students try the product. He was great, he described his product, how it was grown, to the students. They have more time at breakfast. Breakfast is a fun time of day to do a promotion, because the students are calm as they come to school, and they enjoy eating something fresh. Particularly something fresh from the farm.

Module 3: Shining Ideas from the Kitchen
Page: Back-of-the-House Basics

Manager: Welcome. I’m the manager of this kitchen, and I’d like to share some ideas with you on better ways to get more fresh fruits and vegetables on the breakfast program. If you’ll take a little tour of the kitchen with me, I’ll introduce you to some folks that can share those ideas with you. What we serve dictates so much: staff, kitchen space, and layout. Storage and even the serving areas. Adding more fresh fruits and vegetables to breakfast requires some changes. Let’s take a fresh look at some of those changes our shining stars are making.

Rod: The procedures for receiving your perishable produce are so important. And receiving the right quality of your specified produce is the most crucial aspect of receiving hands-down. If the product doesn’t meet your specifications you can refuse to accept it. So you’ve got to look at it, count it, smell it, taste it, even. Ask yourself, what’s the degree of ripeness? And keep in mind when the produce is going to be served. Remember, if you wouldn’t eat it, neither would the kids. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to receive this delivery. The refrigerated produce needs to be moved into the walk-in as soon as possible.

Manager: Oh, he’s right. For every ten degrees shift in temperature, we lose two days of shelf life. This is why we post these produce storage charts and produce handling sheets, so that everyone is in the know. Let’s see what’s happening in the storage area.

Kara: First-in, first-out is always your priority for good produce rotation. That means the produce you’re taking in first is the produce you’re serving first. And equally important is where you store that produce. Pears, peaches, kiwis, strawberries, and tomatoes are all some of those fruits we have to handle with extra care, because they’re so fragile. We have to monitor the degree of ripeness so that we’re serving at the peak of freshness. For example, melons are so much more flavorful when they’re served really ripe. Kids love sweet, juicy fruit.

Manager: Safety is always paramount when serving food. Diana, can you tell us something about safely prepping fruits and veggies?

Diana: Today we’ll be prepping melons, and we’ll be serving them sliced with the skin still on. And we will clean them under cool, running water, with a produce brush, scrubbing really well. Washing them is so very important. And obviously, the cleanliness of your knives and cutting boards is a key to avoid cross-contamination.

Manager: Thanks Diana. These are just a few tips for serving more fresh fruits and vegetables to your students at the breakfast program. There’ll be more tips and resources later in this module. Bye for now!

Module: Shining Ideas from the Kitchen
Page: Silver Platter Service – Lots of Choices

Kids love a lot of choices. Especially when it comes to eating. Maybe you could put out four or five fruits or vegetables and let us choose. Melons are perfect for adding a lot of color, and they come in different shapes. Watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, balls, slices, wedges, cubes, chunks…All fun to eat. Try giving us vegetables in different ways, too. You can put tomatoes and avocado slices on your egg sandwiches. Peppers and onions in our potatoes, and fresh tomato salsa on a breakfast burrito for another day. And then as a special treat, try serving fruit parfaits or smoothies with berries and low-fat yogurt. Umm, I love those!

Module 3: Shining Ideas from the Kitchen
Page: Silver Platter Service – Easy to Eat

I like fruits and vegetables that are easy to eat, and I like it when I can reach everything myself. I like munching on baby carrots, and I like orange smiles, too. My mom knows I eat more vegetables if they’re cut up into bite-size pieces, and some fruit is already the right size, like mandarins, grapes, and plums. Sometimes at breakfast at school, when fruit comes in a package, it looks more yummier when I can see it really good.

Module 3: Shining Ideas from the Kitchen
Page: Silver Platter Service – Looks and Tastes Great

Have a group of us plan breakfast menus for one week that features a different color fruit every day for taste testing. Or our class could design a pledge banner for the cafeteria that students could sign every time they tried a new fruit.

Module 3: Shining Ideas from the Kitchen
Page: Silver Platter Service – Exciting Combinations

One way to encourage children to eat more fruits and veggies at breakfast is to offer high-quality produce at its peak of freshness. To make breakfast even more exciting to eat, combine fresh fruits and vegetables with other breakfast items in interesting and creative ways. These exciting combinations are enjoyed by children where school breakfast is a real success. Waffles and oatmeal can be even more tasty with oranges, grapes, or kiwifruit. Breakfast burritos are a perfect opportunity to serve sliced avocado and fresh tomato salsa. Muffins or scones can be paired up with a fresh fruit smoothie, or yogurt with a fresh fruit salad. Even dry cereal will be more delicious and nutritious if it comes with a whole nectarine or peach. And no student can resist celery with peanut butter and raisins. Fresh fruits and vegetables mix well with almost all breakfast foods, so start offering those exciting combinations today.

Module 3: Shining Ideas from the Kitchen
Page: Bright Ideas From Others – Renee Dykstra

Renee: When I first started telling people that I was going to do the salad bar for breakfast, they all kind of looked at me. “Yeah, right, you know, the kids are gonna take vegetables for breakfast?” But they actually are. They’re increasing their intake of fruits and vegetables like this. And when we started the salad bar, there was some concern over the labor and how much work was gonna be involved in setting up the salad bar for breakfast. But they found out that it really doesn’t add any extra work to it, and we use a lot of the pre-cut carrot sticks, and the salad comes already bagged up, so most of the items are really easy to put out on the salad bar. And if there is anything left over for breakfast on the salad bar, we can just put it on again that same day for lunch, so there’s no waste with it at all. Another concern that was brought up was, is it gonna take a lot of room in our refrigerators to store all those fruits and vegetables that we’re adding to the salad bar? And actually, we’re serving about thirty percent of our population at the school, and it didn’t add a whole lot of extra space that we had to make for the fruits and vegetables that we were bringing in, so it did not cause any problems in that aspect. So overall, adding the salad bar was an awesome thing that we started at our schools, and the kids are just loving it.

Module 3: Shining Ideas from the Kitchen
Page: Bright Ideas From Others – Laura Bullene Jacobo

Laura: One of the challenges we all face in our schools is to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables, and, with just a few changes to your presentation and menu, you can increase consumption at all sites. One of the obvious things is to check the trash cans once your students have eaten. And what I found is mostly whole fruits and vegetables go in the trash. When something’s cut and ready to go, the students are more apt to pick it up, just like we would at home for a snack. And so, by maybe using a sectionizer and cutting the oranges into bite-size pieces, using the apples that are pre-packaged into small, uniform servings to make it ready-to-go, fruit on-the-go. We did a lot of thinking, a lot of research, and these strategies increased consumption. And you can, too, at your school.

Module 3: Shining Ideas from the Kitchen
Page: Bright Ideas From Others – Miuki Carson

Miuki: Central location, we have nine elementary schools, and three junior high schools, and one high school. Out of this central kitchen we are serving 7,000 or about 8,000 students every day. Breakfast, lunch, and maybe little snacks, also. Since we started this central kitchen, our production has just gone up sky high. It is still going up. By focusing our resources on this central kitchen, I think, I believe we are saving lots of money on each individual school site. Compared to our old kitchen, we just did not have storage at all. Because you need space to put big, and they’re kind of big, packaging machine. And this central kitchen has space, so we can have this great overwrap machine that’s the heart of our central kitchen. Say, fresh oranges come in like 120 oranges in a case, and by four people working it takes only 3-4 minutes to produce salad or salad bar for secondary schools now. Before, we had to use, like two or three sinks and water, and another water, and it’s still dirty, but now we’ve got this vegetable/fruits washer, and it’s just so simple. We have a huge storage space, so we can store more fresh produce. Yes, same number of employees from old kitchen, but we’re producing way more fresh fruits and canned fruits, and different kinds of varieties of fruits and vegetables.

Module 3: Shining Ideas from the Kitchen
Page: Bright Ideas From Others – Elizabeth Parra

Elizabeth: Even though I was an active child, sometimes I didn’t make the right choices, so now I have a chance to make the difference. And I do that by offering them some vegetable platters and some fruit platters. That way they’ll understand the content of what they’re eating, how much they’re eating, and why it’s important to eat them for the rest of their life.

Module 4: Fresh Look at Promotions and Merchandising
Page: An Array of Promotions

Offering kids plenty of great fruits and vegetables provides them with choices for healthy eating habits, and hands-on, experiential nutrition education is a fun and memorable way for children to learn about those fruits and veggies. Many school nutrition directors, servers, and kitchen managers use a variety of creative ways to provide interactive nutrition education and introduce an array of fresh fruits and vegetables at breakfast. Nutrition education in the cafeteria, café, or serving area can be affordable and simple, and can provide great reinforcement for any nutrition lessons teachers are doing. And what’s more, these efforts can lead to something larger that involves the whole school and community. The biggest of ideas often grow from one smaller great idea. Borrowing creative ideas from other districts, other kitchen managers, enthusiastic teachers, or from the Internet is a fantastic place to start. Remember, experiential, interactive nutrition education is one of the most important keys to creating long-lasting healthy eating habits in our children.

Module 4: Fresh Look at Promotions and Merchandising
Page: Boost Your Breakfast Participation

Our goal is to encourage kids to eat more fruits and vegetables at breakfast. We want to maintain or increase the number of students eating school meals, and offer lots of fruit and vegetable choices. To reach these goals, cafeteria, classroom, and community must all be connected. And remember, cafeteria and classroom opportunities are found both indoors and outdoors. Staff and administrators can be effective role models as well. The meal program is efficient and high-quality, and part of the education day. And, the program is self-supporting, because the delicious, nutritious, and attractive meals are the preferred choice of students. Ideally, a school meal program is linked to and supported by the entire school and community. They work together to create the school wellness policy, which supports the school meal program, to ensure children’s overall health and well-being.

Try simple suggestive selling. It’s an easy and very effective strategy for marketing your produce. Integrate easy promotions that reward students with stickers for trying new fruit and veggie options. Facilitate community and special school events that feature taste tests of fruits and vegetables you are promoting. Have students plan and conduct a promotion, creating that classroom connection. They can also use the school bulletin or newspaper to advertise the promotion. Work with student groups to create menus. It’s a great way to involve students, build in student feedback, and get buy-in. Include fruits and veggies grown in the school garden in your menu planning for breakfast. Repeat opportunities for kids to try new fruits and veggies. The rule of thumb for developing long-term healthy eating habits is this: try, try again. Offer students samples of newly-featured fruit or vegetables as many times as possible, before serving it as a menu item. Whether they get to try the new produce in the cafeteria or the classroom, sampling helps ensure success.

Take advantage of the fact that kids love to prepare food, and they are more likely to eat a fruit or vegetable if they prepared it themselves. By collaborating with teachers, this food preparation can connect to science, social science, math, or language arts academic standards and add an interesting dimension to lessons. Make use of the resources and programs offered by Harvest of the Month. This monthly sampling program features in-season fruits and vegetables, and is great fun for kids, kitchen staff, and teachers. Take students on field trips to local orchards, farms, farmers’ markets, or even grocery stores. These can be amazing opportunities for discovery, experiential learning, and student feedback. Get feedback by using one of the simple surveys from the array of resources. Create interest and excitement with seasonal events, such as special guest appearances from celebrities or farmers, or schoolwide health fairs that involve community members.

Module 4: Fresh Look at Promotions and Merchandising
Page: Getting Buy In … The Four “C’s”

In the Hawthorne School District, what’s really worked for us is thinking big about promoting fruits and vegetables, and helping kids make the healthy choice when the healthy choices are presented to them. And so in order to accomplish that, we’ve come up with this concept called the three C’s. The three C’s are: cafeteria, classroom, and community. And in the middle of the three C’s is, of course, the child. It’s really the four C’s. Because we want to impact the health of kids, and we want them to make the right choice, the healthy choice, when that healthy choice is presented to them. So we offer promotions in the cafeteria, in the classroom, in the community. Of course, the support of teachers, school administrators, and our food services director, Anna Apoian, is very forward-thinking. She’s a registered dietician, she thinks about the business side of food services as well as the nutrition side, and that’s really important. To garner community involvement, the first thing we had to do was change our mindset. And the typical mindset is, “We’re here by ourselves, we’re on our own, oh no, what do we do?” So we really had to think in terms of there is community partners out there that want to work with us, that want to help kids, that have kids of their own that probably go to this school. So, it just took asking those first couple of times, “Will you partner with us? Will you come to our nutrition night?” And we got a couple of yeses, and it just kept ballooning from there. We also use a local farm as part of our salad bar promotions. They provide the produce for the salad bar, and then they come out the next day and do a little guest speaking in classrooms, so that the kids not only get to taste the produce that’s grown on the farm, but they also get to see a real farmer and ask questions. It’s really neat. And, of course, then we’ve got the local grocery store that helps us promote our Harvest of the Month program. They donate fruit baskets for our special events, and they come out and do some nutrition education for our parents and the community, too. So, we’ve just got community partners like that really sincerely want to help others, and it just took that first initial step of making the phone call and asking, “Will you help us?”

Module 4: Fresh Look at Promotions and Merchandising
Page: Getting Buy In … From Students

The other day I was at the breakfast bar at my school, and I saw these melon slices on the counter. They all looked really delicious. They were cut into these cool, long wedges. But what really got me to try one of them was the fact that there were these whole melons right next to the slices. There were also delicious fruits and vegetables all around the melon slices. It got me thinking, “You know what? I’m gonna try a melon slice.”

Yesterday morning they said that they were gonna have different colored apples for this week’s breakfast. That’s fantastic. I love apples.

Hey, wow. The café is serving cherry tomatoes today, some of which were grown in the school garden. That’s pretty neat. Me and my friends have been watching them grow, and now we actually get to eat them. That’s very cool.

So, one of the servers taught me a really neat way to eat this. Reminded me of ice cream. Scoop it out like this. Then she challenged me to eat it without tearing the skin. I’m still working on that part.

You know what our cafeteria served for breakfast this morning instead of potatoes? Sweet potatoes. I love sweet potatoes and yams. They’re just so delicious and easy to eat. And they fill me up, too.

Whether you involve your school and entire community in promoting fruits and vegetables for students at breakfast, or you start on a smaller scale, with a focused promotion in your cafeteria, you’ll get students to try fruits and vegetables for breakfast. And encourage kids’ healthy lifelong eating habits you’ll see every day.

Module 4: Fresh Look at Promotions and Merchandising
Page: Bright Ideas From Others – Anne Gaffney

Anne: A simple, creative marketing strategy that we’ve implemented this school year is to have colorful baskets in our cafeteria, so that when the students come join us for breakfast, they’re seeing a table full of fresh fruits, whether they’re canned fruits, or dried fruits and fresh fruits, they’re all in different baskets. Baskets just like this. We also label each basket with a tag, so the students can see which fruit we’re offering, and then it’s written out for them to read as well, so it’s part of an educational experience. Besides just having colorful baskets in our cafeterias, we’ve painted canvases and put them on the wall. Different colors, primary colors to make it real bright and exciting. And with those canvases we put every day pictures of the fruits that we’re offering. So they see it as they’re coming down the cafeteria line, and then they look through the cafeteria line and see all the fresh fruits that we’re offering. So it’s not only changed to offer more fresh fruits and vegetables to the students, but it’s also changed the attitudes of our staff. They’re excited about serving produce in such an exciting way.

Module 4: Fresh Look at Promotions and Merchandising
Page: Bright Ideas From Others – Kelly Martin

Kelly: We purchased a produce cart, and the produce cart was very similar to what the students would see in the grocery store. When the students come through the lunch line now, they pick up their meal tray, and on the meal tray they have all of their requirements that they need to be able to create a reimbursable meal. And then they stop at the produce cart, where they’re able to shop for fruits and vegetables. Sometimes we’ve incorporated things that they might be less likely to be familiar with, so that we introduce them to new fruits and vegetables. One of my staff members stands by the produce cart, has that personal relationship with the students, and is able to be there to answer questions and to guide that student through their lunch process. The addition of the produce stand has changed the atmosphere within our cafeteria. Our students are very happy, and are more eager to eat what they’re choosing, rather than having it placed on their plate. And myself and my staff have seen a large increase in the consumption of fruits and vegetables. We have actually more than doubled our fruits and vegetable consumption at breakfast time, which very much pleases us, and makes our staff and our community very proud of what we’re doing.

Module 4: Fresh Look at Promotions and Merchandising
Page: Bright Ideas From Others – Mary Tolen-Davi

Mary: At the high school level, we found that by putting attractive baskets of assorted fruits on our serving line right at the point of sale, we’ve increased our fruit consumption and students have really enjoyed the variety of nice fresh fruits and vegetables that we have available to them. It’s a great way to get our kids consuming more fruits and vegetables, and I think that availability in a very attractive and colorful fashion is the way to go.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: A Comprehensive Coordinated Approach – The Connection

Offering kids plenty of great fruits and vegetables provides them with choices for healthy eating habits, and hands-on, experiential nutrition education is a fun and memorable way for children to learn about those fruits and veggies. Many school nutrition directors, servers, and kitchen managers use a variety of creative ways to provide interactive nutrition education and introduce an array of fruits and vegetables at breakfast. Nutrition education in the cafeteria, café, or serving area can be affordable and simple. It reinforces nutrition lessons that teachers are already doing. These efforts can lead to something larger that involves the whole school and community. The biggest of ideas often grow from one smaller, great idea. Borrowing creative ideas from other districts, other kitchen managers, enthusiastic teachers, and from the Internet is a fantastic place to start. Remember, experiential, interactive nutrition education is one of the most important keys to creating long-lasting healthy eating habits in our children.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: A Penny for Your Thoughts – Elementary Ideas

Use Harvest of the Month materials to help you feature seasonal fruits or vegetables. Provide stickers to students who attend breakfast and try the new produce. Teachers can also have the Harvest of the Month educator newsletter, and take attendance by asking whether the student ate a featured fruit or veggie at breakfast. Send menus home with students, and include breakfast items with fruits and veggies listed first in the menus. Remind parents that school breakfasts help students learn and stay healthy, and add fun facts about featured produce for that week. Put activities on the back of menus, and give incentives to teachers and students to complete the activities. Ask students to create fun and educational bulletin boards to deliver your nutritional message every day.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: A Penny for Your Thoughts –Secondary Ideas

Have students in technology or art classes design posters that provide nutrition education about a fruit or vegetable that is new to the breakfast menu. Students can assist with tastings of a featured fruit or veggie by handing out nutrition information. The taste testers can complete a scoring sheet or simply vote for the produce they prefer. During National Nutrition Month, students can make announcements over the school intercom. They can give facts about the health benefits of fruits and vegetables, and the importance of school breakfast. Bite-size samples of mentioned veggies and fruit can then be provided at breakfast.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: A Penny for Your Thoughts – Utilizing Students

In working through the baby steps of nutrition education, a good approach may be to direct these efforts to a small group of students. Students listen to each other, and can be a powerful influence on each other. So working with one classroom or a group of students such as breakfast student helpers, or student leadership groups, or extracurricular clubs, is a great way to kick off your nutrition education efforts. Starting small can give your site the momentum needed to try bigger ideas that involve the whole school and community.

For my media class, I interviewed teachers on their favorite fruit or veggie. Then I added nutritional information to the story and broadcast it on our televised morning announcements. It was really cool.

Have a group of us plan breakfast menus for one week that features a different color fruit every day for taste testing.

Our art class could design a pledge banner for the cafeteria that students could sign every time they tried a new fruit.

In our class, we vote for everybody’s favorite fruits and vegetables. Our teacher puts it on the big graph, and we put it on the wall so everybody can see it.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: Creating Connections – Taste Tests

Whether you’re planning to conduct a tasting in the cafeteria or the classroom, there are several factors you’ll want to consider. Decide how you will gather data on student preferences, and keep the rating system as simple as possible. How you display the produce items you’ve chosen to sample is crucial to the success of a good tasting. Show a piece of fruit whole somewhere in the display, but prepare bite-size samples for them to try. The best way to start a tasting is to introduce the fruit or vegetable to your students by letting them hold it. Then, show them interesting features of the produce, and tell them about its value to their health. It’s always a great idea to recognize students’ efforts by giving them a small gift for participating. Pencils, stickers, and visual handouts are perfect. Many teachers will support and reinforce what you are doing by giving additional nutrition education about your fresh fruits and vegetables. Once students have tasted it, have them rate the fruit or vegetable using a very simple form of evaluation. You might ask them to suggest other produce items they’d like to try or have served in the cafeteria. This is a nice opportunity to hear from your customer, and at the same time teach them something about nutrition.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: Creating Connections – School Gardens

School gardens provide tangible, rewarding learning experiences. Students who plant, nurture, and harvest their own foods develop a greater appreciation for healthy foods and healthy lifestyles. The consumption of fruits and vegetables go up, and their science achievement scores go up as well. Participating in gardening activities cultivates a sense of community, as well as students’ social development, academic achievement, and environmental stewardship. Because teamwork and parent volunteers are involved, there’s often a positive effect on behavior and social skills. Teachers report an improvement in self-esteem and attitudes toward school from student gardeners. Child nutrition and food service personnel have a unique opportunity to work with teachers and students to feature school-grown foods in taste tests, as additions to salads, or in other dishes. Students can clean and prepare the food, if the school district and county health office allows. With a little effort and cooperation, a school gardening program can be implemented with continual rewards that reach throughout the campus.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education – Opening Page

Organizing health fairs and other grand-scale school events can bring about opportunities to bridge the community with your students in a comprehensive nutrition education effort. There are countless ways for students of all ages to be involved. The key is to make it fun for the kids. It’s the perfect opportunity to get them excited about trying fruits and vegetables, and to learn the reasons why they’re so important for their health. Connecting students with local farmers is another great way to put some excitement and relevance into nutrition education. Farmers are often passionate about what they do, and eager to help you. Nutrition education does not have to stop at the door of your site. There is an abundance of resources and agencies that can help you build that bridge into a communitywide effort toward better health for your students.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education – What is Good Nutrition Education?

When I first started teaching, I was honestly astounded with how many unhealthy habits children had. And being in the classroom, I tried to incorporate as many healthy food items within lessons to expose the kids to healthier foods. Not only did I do this, but I also encouraged other teachers to do this, and so we came up with some great ideas of how to correlate nutrition education with core curricular subjects. With math, language arts, and science…And what we realized is, that kids are so excited to learn about healthy foods. And if you incorporate it with a core curricular subject that meets a standard, then the administrators are happy that the students are working on their basic skills as well as improving their eating habits. As a teacher, we realize that it is important to incorporate many different modalities within a lesson, and when you’re teaching nutrition education, it’s no different. Bring the produce into the classroom, give the students the opportunity to get their hands involved, get their senses involved. We’re not only teaching them orally, we’re not only giving them visuals, we’re also giving them a chance to touch the produce, get their kinesthetics involved. Good nutrition education will incorporate as much of that as you possibly can in a lesson. So you’re encouraging kids to make healthy goals for themselves, to eat healthier, to exercise more. You’re encouraging kids to read food labels and compare percentages. Within Hawthorne School District, we’ve had numerous site events called Family Nutrition Nights, and this is when we have stations that revolve around specific activities that teach students and parents, as well as teachers and administrators, about specific foods within the food pyramid. It teaches them about how to make healthy choices. Giving the students the opportunity to learn with their parents as well during these events is a great time for family, and a great time for students and parents to make goals together. So, good nutrition education really encompasses all of that. It’s incorporating as much as you can in a lesson, building those skills, making it exciting, so the kids are well prepared to move forward in life with healthy habits and great knowledge.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education – Watch a Classroom Example!

Foods that are whole and natural are better for us than foods that have added sugar and added fat. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely! So we have some helpers in the classroom today, and they put some food items into the food groups. And what we’re going to do together is you’re going to help me decide which foods are whole and natural, and which foods in each food group have added sugars and added fats. Okay, boys and girls, the vegetables…Who can help me decide what kind of vegetable this is? Yes? Very good, it’s an eggplant. So is this an example of whole and natural? Is this an example of whole and natural? No, because it has added sugars to it. Right. Very good. So it’s all about making healthier choices. Now, the yellow orange produce contains vitamin C. Why is vitamin C important? Yes?

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education – Making a Tasting Educational

As a teacher in a low-income area, I’ve realized the importance of exposing children to a variety of produce. So, when kids have the chance to touch and feel and taste new produce, and learn how it’s good for them, they’re so excited. Not only because they get to taste them, but also because they get to play with the food and learn at the same time. So, after the students have the opportunity to taste the healthy food items, they’re excited about the new nutrition information they’ve learned, they’re going home, they’re talking to their parents about the produce, they’re teaching the parents about the healthy benefits the produce provides, or healthy food items. And the parents are actually going into the grocery stores, and going to farmers’ markets that they hadn’t done before, and purchasing the food items. Exposing kids to new foods, such as the loquat, is a wonderful experience. Because the loquat is something they’ve probably seen before, but they’ve never had the chance to try it. So, giving the kids the chance to taste it and discover they like it is a very exciting experience for them.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: Endless Possibilities for Nutrition Education – Watch a Tasting!

Aren’t those beautiful? Yeah! And a loquat, again, is a fruit. And it grows off of a tree that can grow probably about ten feet tall. And what does the skin feel like? It feels smooth? Does it feel like any other produce that you know of? Does it feel like the skin of a pear, maybe? Yeah? Okay. Did you smell it? What does it smell like? It smells sweet! Very good! Well, boys and girls, again, what did I tell you about different colored produce? Different colored produce has lots of? Vitamins in it. Well, what kind of vitamins do you think this produce, the loquat, has? Go ahead and look through your packet and find the yellow and orange description…

You take your string, okay? And you put it on the side of the loquat, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to measure the distance around the loquat. We’re gonna see how long of a measurement it is around the loquat.

Here we go, are you ready? Take a bite. Yum!

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: Bright Ideas From Others – Robert Schram

Robert: After we started introducing the breakfast in the classroom, and we started bringing the fresh fruits into the classroom, the teachers really got involved and really got excited about the fruits and vegetables we were bringing in, and said, “Hey! Maybe we need to start doing some nutrition education!” So, we’ve partnered up with some local farmers, the nutrition network, and other people, to get the teachers involved. And we’ve really seen a rise in the consumption of fruit by the student population, because now they know it’s healthier for them. So, they’re getting involved and they’re really enjoying it.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: Bright Ideas From Others – Michelle Roman

Michelle: Harvest of the Month can be funded in several different ways. One is, we wrote a grant, actually, that was an outside grant through the state of California, and it was an antitrust settlement fund through the Attorney General’s office. So there are different types of funding out there. But one really great piece that you can get some funding for your Harvest of the Month program is work with local service clubs in your area. Lions Clubs and Rotary Clubs are always looking to participate in schools and adopt schools, and what a great way that they can connect with the schools in providing this great opportunity to talk about nutrition in the classroom.

Module 5: A New Light on Nutrition Education
Page: Bright Ideas From Others – Brenda Padilla

Brenda: One of the things we’re doing is utilizing our lunch fruit and vegetable bars at breakfast. It didn’t occur to us at first that the kids would think it was a novelty, but they do like self-serving the fruits and vegetables at breakfast. It’s bringing the kids in, it’s increasing participation. One of the things that’s new on the bar that they really like is the yogurt parfait, utilizing the Team Nutrition recipe cards, and, also, in that we use our commodity fruit at the same time. So they’re getting yet another serving, at least, of fruit that morning. One of the things that’s made a huge difference for our breakfast program is the partnering with the community members who bring the marketing to the program, provide the brochures, get the word out that it’s really cool to eat breakfast with us. And the kids and the parents think it’s cool, it’s increased our participation. They’re doing things that we cannot do, but make all the difference in the world for our program.