More schools taking healthful steps at lunchtime

When it comes to reinventing a lunchroom menu, less is more: less sugar, less salt, less fat.

Sometimes, though, more results in less.

In St. Paul, for instance, school lunches offer more than the minimum calories required by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, because they offer more servings of fruits and vegetables than required. But more produce means less fat.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has been releasing a report card on the state of school lunches since 2001. In its 2007 report, it noted that 64 percent of districts regularly feature vegetarian and vegan selections on their menus or offer them on request. Also, almost three in four districts offer an alternative to dairy milk: bottled water, juice or soy milk.

Nationwide, food service directors are finding ways to mix in more whole grains, whether by making pizza crusts with whole-wheat flour or by serving salads that have wheatberries or barley. Lower-fat versions of favorite kid choices include turkey hot dogs and skim-milk cheeses. Cheese sauce glopped over broccoli may be replaced with olive oil and grated Romano cheese.

Scratch cooking is coming back in an effort to wean schools of processed foods that often are too salty and too high in fat. But that also may require revamping school kitchens that have devolved to heat-and-eat status.

Even more important changes are occurring outside the cafeteria. The federal government now requires that all school districts establish "wellness" policies if they are in the federally funded lunch program. That means that high-fat and high-sugar food and drinks will be rarer, replaced by bottled water, low-fat and nonfat milk, and 100-percent-fruit juices. In high school, there may be sports drinks and diet sodas, but in smaller, 12-ounce serving sizes.

Soft-drink companies have gotten the message: The federal policy prompted the American Beverage Association to commit to removing all full-calorie soft drinks by the 2009-10 school year.

KIM ODE