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Aloha! Hawaii School Lunches Made from Scratch

June 2nd, 2011 Leave a comment Go to comments
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School lunches, served daily to millions of children across the nation, are a nutritional mess. What can you expect from a meal that must cost less than $2 per child? Subsidized by the USDA through surplus agricultural commodities and extensively processed to lower costs and extend shelf-life and transportability, these lunches must improve. They have become a focal point in the war against obesity.

Now some good news from Hawaii:

Starting in August, 15 entrees in the 25-day monthly menu cycle will be made from scratch in Hawaii public schools, where 100,000 meals are served daily in the nation’s 10th largest school system and the only statewide district in the country.

“The mission is to have less processed food and use basic ingredients instead of opening up a box and heating up something,” said Glenna Owens, director of the school food services branch. The district already serves about 10 entrees from scratch, but the new initiative moves toward making a majority of the meals that way. read more…

What you need to know:

In many schools, there is a huge disconnect between what students are taught is healthy in classrooms, and what they are actually served in school cafeterias.The cheap, processed foods being served today are the least healthy – full of fat, sodium, and very highly processed. And while kids love the chicken nuggets and pizzas, their little bodies are becoming life size Pillsbury dough boys and girls.

Making food from scratch on school premises is not as easy as it sounds. Staff have to be trained to cook, instead of what happens today which is just unpacking and heating. Just think about slicing tomatoes for 500 kids, or timing minutes for steaming broccoli to come out just right (before the sulfuric odor and mushiness sets in).

Kudos to Oahu School district and their dedicated kitchen staff.

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  • Guest

    “their little bodies are becoming life size Pillsbury dough boys and girls.”

    Why the need to make fun of fat people?

    You could have written that sentence in a non-judgmental, health-based way, but you chose to go the route of making fun of appearance and equating rounder with funny-looking and something that should be made fun of.

    This is why people have self-image problems: they’re constantly bombarded by the media telling them they don’t look “acceptable” or “right” and are subjected to thousands of subtle digs and put downs.

    • Karyn

      I’m overweight myself, and I didn’t read it as making fun of fat children, but rather as a cry of distress at the lack of care for something as essential as what we are feeding them in schools.  Even under the best circumstances, people will vary in weight and build, but the image used–coming from the processed foods industry, no less–underscores the disconnect between the “standard” diet and real food.

      • Crystalmo2009

        Very nicely said & in a classy way. We as a countr need to make some serious adjustments to our eating habits! Its sad & disappointing to see kids & adults overweight & unhealthy. I see this everyday at school. I am a PE teacher & it’s so disheartening to see some of my students who are overweight. We need to do better!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QFFMZIULSHJ477SGRQHM4IBP2Q walletjes

    I do not like how they are demonizing ground beef…. red meat has essential vitamins in the fat burning process. 

    “”We’re going back to the old days when we mostly cooked from scratch,”
    she said after a hurried lunch hour of feeding 900 students at Leihoku
    Elementary made-from-scratch chili with rice, another meal popular among
    Hawaii families. The school’s version is made with ground beef that’s
    75 percent soy protein, and the rice is brown – not that the kids know,
    or seem to care.”

    Soy protein requires heavy processing to get it to a state that can be used to make these pseudo patties.

    Also what is made from scratch here? Potatoes being cut up and thrown into a deep fryer  as opposed to: potatoes cut by a machine -> thrown in a deep fryer -> frozen -> bagged -> reheated?

  • rashmi from yumkid.com

    Wow.. one more reason to move to Hawaii! :)

  • Anonymous

    This is great news! Hopefully this idea will catch on throughout the US. It really is a shame that kids are not provided with healthy lunches at school. I pack my kids’ lunches right after dinner. We use the Laptop Lunches bento boxes, so I just fill their containers up and store the packed boxes in the fridge until the morning. This way we get to sleep as long as possible and I know that my kids are getting a healthy lunch. For some great lunch ideas, check out their website: http://www.laptoplunches.com/healthy-lunches-bored.php. 

  • L DS

    The schools in Memphis got rid of most of the cafeteria workers and opened a “central kitchen” which is what I call the processed food intake center. The food comes to the “central kitchen” then it’s reparceled out to the schools where they heat and serve. When I was in school, the cafeteria workers cooked food right there in the kitchens. I’m not saying it was the most healthy and wholesome but it wasn’t just like going through the line and receiving a heat and eat concoction like you’d get from the frozen food section either.