Hawai'i school cooks take lessons in healthy feeding
By Christie Wilson
Neighbor Island Editor
Christie Wilson • The Honolulu Advertiser
KAHULUI, Maui — Macaroni salad made with ricotta cheese instead of high-fat mayonnaise didn't quite cut the mustard with a group of cooks who prepare meals at Hawai'i public schools, but it did get them thinking about new ways to serve more nutritious food.
Following Chef Paul Onishi's lead, food-service workers John Cadman and Linda Seto fry up a mock-chicken katsu using a soy-based substitute. Nine school food-service managers from around the Islands and state education officials spent the week in a test class at Maui Community College's culinary arts center.
The nine school food-service managers from Maui, O'ahu and the Big Island, along with three officials from the Department of Education's School Food Services Branch, spent the week learning about nutrition and trying innovative recipes at Maui Community College's $17 million culinary arts center.
They were participating in a test run of a nutritional training program to be offered to the state's 202 school food-service managers, who serve 140,000 to 150,000 lunches and as many as 24,000 breakfasts daily. The program is a joint effort of the DOE, the Department of Health and Hawai'i 5-A-Day Coalition, being developed with $33,000 in tobacco settlement money.
A need for healthier school meals grows more urgent, with each new study showing high rates of childhood obesity, diabetes and other diet-related problems. School food-service managers need to learn that "if they don't skim the fat or reduce the salt or sugar, it has a health impact," said Gene Kaneshiro, director of the School Food Services Branch.
The people who run school cafeterias receive training in sanitation and safety rules, but do not get the same education in nutrition, he said. While a number of school food-service managers have advanced degrees or extensive experience in commercial kitchens, many worked their way up the ranks without formal training, Kaneshiro said.
Training participant Guy Suzuki of Campbell High School agreed "there is a lot more to know about nutrition and healthy food. We are accountable for this. We need to go in the direction the whole nation is going in, and that is providing healthy, nutritious food."
During the weeklong test run — actual training will last only three days — the school food-service managers listened to classroom lectures and huddled in the MCC kitchen lab, learning how to cut back the fat and salt in meals and increase nutritional content while boosting flavor — largely by using fresh ingredients and limiting processed food.
MCC chef instructor Chris Speere demonstrated how to make pizza dough from scratch; how to whip up a burrito filling with fresh-cooked beans and vegetables instead of using the frozen variety; and how to make broth with vegetable scraps instead of opening a can of sodium-laden chicken stock.
Speere also shared a recipe for stir-fried beef broccoli that doesn't use cooking oil. He oven-roasts marinated meat and mixes it with steamed veggies and a low-sodium black bean sauce.
Christie Wilson • The Honolulu Advertiser
Few of the recipes used in the training will be adopted on school menus, but the demonstrations introduced food-service managers to the possibilities of reducing fat, salt and sugar in the meals they prepare.
Chef Paul Onishi serves up a beef tomato dish that substitutes fat-free soy for meat. It was one of several meals he cooked to demonstrate how to reduce fat and salt levels in school meals. Food-service managers say kids' tastes are often the biggest obstacle to better nutrition, and parents don't always set the best example.
Linda Seto of Lahaina Intermediate said she found the training useful in bringing "us back to what our responsibilities as school food-service managers are. And with all these ideas, the light bulb went off. 'Oh, that will work at my school,''' she said.
Serving nutritious meals is not as simple as switching from ground beef to tofu. School food-service managers must comply with federal nutritional requirements that have resisted alternatives to meat and dairy, and are subject to government procurement rules, cost and availability of food items, and finicky student appetites — maybe the toughest obstacle to healthier food choices.
The managers expressed frustration that parents do not reinforce the message. "Kids come to school with Twinkies, cookies and chips. They're not used to eating home-cooked meals. They recognize the pizza but not the beef stew," said Tanee Connally of Makawao Elementary School on Maui.
Barbara Joy of Noelani Elementary in Honolulu said she walks around during lunch and sees students eating home lunches of Spam musubi or Oscar Mayer Lunchables. The parents themselves don't realize which foods are not part of a healthy diet, she said. If they did, they would understand that school lunches are a better, cheaper alternative.
Kaneshiro hopes to see the training program in place in a year to 18 months, once course materials are ready and instructors and training sites lined up. In the meantime, students shouldn't expect much change in school lunches.
Menus are set for the 2003-04 school year. However, school kitchens will be encouraged to use more whole grains in baked goods and begin mixing a small amount of brown rice into the white.
"At the beginning the kids may not like brown rice, but we have to tell them why brown rice is good, and maybe present it in a different way," Kaneshiro said.
Even after the nutritional training is in place, changes won't be made overnight, he said.
"We have to be subtle, or we lose our customers."
