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Today I headed back to my alma mater at Lakeland School District and met with the director of food services, dietitian Kristen Collarini. Today was an interesting day because unlike a lot of other places I've visited, I know Lakeland like the back of my hand. So rather than today being an entirely new experience, it was instead like having an entirely new perspective on a lot of things I'm already very familiar with.
After meeting up with Mrs. Collarini at the high school's office, we headed over to the Scott elementary school to observe breakfast. I saw a lot of familiar faces- I knew most of the lunch ladies and they recognized me from when I was a lot smaller! I got to see some basic prep like washing fresh plums and portioning fruits and vegetables into small black containers. I also learned a few interesting facts about nutritional requirements for the food served. For example, the school isn't allowed to serve whole or 2% milk, however, they can serve chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla milk! (Although, those flavored milks have to also use 1% or skim milk as their base). She also talked a bit about weekly nutritional goals for students. On the topic of food groups, kids in kindergarten through 5th grade should ideally get 2.5 cups of fruit, 3.75 cups of vegetables, 8-9 ounces of grains, 8-10 ounces of meats, and 5 cups of milk per week. There's also categories for 6th-8th and 9th-12th graders and so of course those amounts go up. After breakfast ended, we also helped get ready for a grandparent's day luncheon- today happened to be the day when third graders can bring their grandparents in to have some snacks with them in the cafeteria. Things got a little crazy, though, when the coffee we put out ran out super quickly. The grandparents went through 40 cups of it in 10 minutes! Because of this, Mrs. Collarini was making pot after pot of coffee for a good 40 minutes! I've always been told that working in food service brings completely new and different challenges each day and so it requires a lot of improvisation and going with the flow. I think the coffee incident really emphasized that! Following breakfast at Scott, we headed over to the Mayfield elementary school for lunch. We brought about 8 loaves of bread with us; the cafeteria had run out of bread and so Mrs. Collarini had picked up some more. She told me that each month, she spends about $50-$100 out of pocket to buy items that run out or are really needed by the cafeteria. Thankfully though, she gets reimbursed for them at the end of the month! That also goes to show that food service work can bring a lot of challenges. The lunch at Mayfield was the first of the day, so it was kindergarteners being served. Since they're so young, they need a lot of assistance from the lunch ladies in deciding on what to pick. It was really cute though, they like to talk about everything while they're in line being served! The main entrée options on today's menu were Italian dunkers, pizza, and ham and cheese on the pretzel bun, and unsurprisingly the Italian dunkers were by far the most popular choice! The day before, the Mayfield registers were also having some trouble and so students couldn't use their online food money accounts. Instead, students had to go back to the early 00's way of writing their names down. Thankfully though, the registers were working today! After lunch at Mayfield, we headed back to the high school for lunch. The main entrée today was shredded steak sandwich, but, the high school always has a really huge selection of alternates for students. That actually brings me to the topic of other alternate items, mainly al a carte ones. Since Mrs. Collarini had been telling me all throughout today about relatively strict nutritional guidelines for foods served, I had been wondering how al a carte items fit into this. Turns out that the school has separate snack guidelines, and surprisingly, almost all of the items fit into it! She even showed me a list of dessert products from Hershey that fit the bill, such as mini ice cream bars and cones, ice cream cups, and Scooter popsicles. Obviously these foods aren't nutritious per say, but having guidelines that allow students to purchase snacks that aren't egregiously unhealthy is nice. She did however, point out one troublesome al a carte item to me: cheese covered soft pretzels. Some nutritional aspects of them don't meet the school's healthy snack guidelines, but business management at the school really wants them to be available to students, so well, they're available. I don't know the numbers for the snack guidelines or what nutrients they look at, but if I had to take a guess, I would say that the cheese covered soft pretzels either have too much saturated fat or sodium. Anyways though, today was a really insightful day for me. It was fun to go back to my old stomping grounds and see food service from the perspective of employees as opposed to my years of seeing it as a student. Getting to interact with the youngsters while they were being served also brightened my perspective on food service a little. Out of all the major fields of dietetics, it's the one that I've never really bee enthusiastic about. However, seeing the excitement of a six year old when he gets his chocolate milk and Italian dunkers is really something. I still don't think I'd ever be interested in working in food service in somewhere like a nursing home or hospital, but, perhaps I will reconsider it in regards to schools!
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