If you’re old enough, you remember the days when “cafeteria ladies” had a craft and the food at school was hand made, right down to the dinner rolls. After decades of moving away from that proud tradition, districts are slowly returning to it. In Maryland, a stand-out “boot camp” for food service workers statewide teaches basic cookery, nutrition science, professional kitchen protocols, and much more. It’s a model for training programs that are emerging all over the nation as schools work their ...
Aug 04, 2014•40 min•Ep. 12
School gardens are now being embraced nationwide, as is farm-to-school. But school garden-to-cafeteria? It’s what’s coming next–well-established in some districts, in fact, which offer valuable resources to beginners. Concerned about food safety? Funding? Whether or not to buy student-grown or accept it as a donation? Is it worth the trouble–does it interest children in eating more produce, trying new fruits and veggies? The nation’s two leading experts, from Colorado and Oregon, discuss all thi...
Jul 14, 2014•38 min•Ep. 11
HAVE IT YOUR WAY through partnerships with nimble small and mid-size processors. Want your own wild-rice meatloaf? A baked falafel made with local beans? Tyson and Schwan’s can’t help, but there are newcomers to K-12 food service who can. In this episode of Inside School Food , we’ll meet two of them and learn how to get healthy, clean-label foods developed or adapted to your specifications through direct processor-SFA collaboration. This program was brought to you by Whole Foods Market . “There...
Jul 07, 2014•46 min•Ep. 10
School food has been commanding headlines for well over a month, as controversy rages over costs and complications associated with implementation of stricter new nutrition standards. If you’re confused over who’s on what side of this debate, and what it’s really all about, you’re not alone. It’s gotten so political. Today we’re stepping away from all of that to simply look at what the standards are designed to do for kids, and whether or not they’ve been able to do it. We’ll discuss three studie...
Jun 30, 2014•32 min•Ep. 9
Salad bars aren’t rocket science, but getting them right calls for careful, common-sense assembly with the right ingredients. If you’ve listened to Salad Bars Part 1 (and we suggest that you do), maybe you’re wondering if you can get salad bars to work in your district–or work better. Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools can help. Need equipment donation? Technical assistance? A community of practice? You’ve come to the right place. This program was brought to you by Bonnie Plants . “78% of the dist...
Jun 23, 2014•35 min•Ep. 8
Composting and recycling at school isn’t just about eco-friendly waste diversion. It also provides students with a powerful lesson in sound environmental practice that they’ll carry with them for the rest of their lives. The message is simple: what comes from the earth can be returned to enrich it, so it can provide for us again and again. How to get started? Today’s guests, from San Francisco, CA and Northampton, MA, will tell you how: Start small. Champion your early adopters. Develop educatio...
Jun 16, 2014•34 min•Ep. 7
Are you a salad bar skeptic? If you are, you’re not alone. Many a committed K-12 food service director is hesitant to try, out of concern over participation, waste, expense, mess, and food safety. And now salad bars in schools are seemingly even trickier to pull off. How do you insure that kids are meeting their daily fruit and vegetable quotas–and the required weekly balance of green and orange veggies, and beans and peas–if you let them serve themselves? For answers, we will first turn to scho...
Jun 09, 2014•42 min•Ep. 6
In Jefferson County, Colorado, a better school lunch often starts with better chicken: locally and sustainably grown, without antibiotics, and prepared from scratch. In the world of K-12 food service, this is widely regarded as an Olympian swan dive off a 33-foot-high board–beautiful to behold, but not something you can or should try at home. Today’s guests on Inside School Food explain how they do it (turns out it’s not that hard, if you’ve got ovens and the right supplier), and how their effor...
Jun 02, 2014•35 min•Ep. 5
This week’s episode of Inside School Food is the first installment of a series of episodes we’re calling “And Now for Something Completely Different,” in which we profile programs and business models that upend common assumptions about what’s possible in school food. In the schools served by not-for-profit DC Central Kitchen, children formerly accustomed to pizza and breaded chicken fingers eagerly chow down on house-made fresh food that routinely includes beets, cauliflower, and collards. The s...
May 26, 2014•36 min•Ep. 4
Today on Inside School Food . we’re talking kitchen equipment—What do we have? What do we need? And how can we go on doing without under new meal-pattern requirements that call for more—and more perishable—produce, that staff need to safely store, prepare, portion, and serve? Jessica Donze Black of the Pew Safe and Healthful Kids’ Food Project and Jon Dickl of Knox County, TN Public Schools discuss widespread infrastructure deficits in school districts coast to coast, and what steps you ca...
May 19, 2014•35 min•Ep. 3
The face of free school food is about to change in some neighborhoods thanks to something called Community Eligibility. Community Eligibility helps bring universal meal service to high poverty districts. It’s been introduced in phases, and this coming school year it’s going national. This week on Inside School Food , Laura Stanley is chatting with two experts who can help listeners understand the specifics of Community Eligibility — Madeleine Levin, senior policy analyst in the Child Nutrition U...
May 12, 2014•32 min•Ep. 2
Go inside school food on Inside School Food , a brand new show on Heritage Radio Network! Paying for the new school lunch on just six extra cents (yes, you heard that right) per meal: Gitta Grether-Sweeney, Director of Nutrition Services at Portland, OR Public Schools and Bertrand Weber, Director of Culinary and Nutrition Services for Minneapolis Public Schools, wrestle with one of the thorniest issues in school food today: How can districts afford the abundant produce now required under the new...
May 05, 2014•39 min•Ep. 1
