Schools Take Bite Out of Old Image of Cafeteria Food

At the exclusive Ojai Valley School, students sit down to lunches of albondigas soup, chicken in pineapple sauce and tofu teriyaki.

The kitchen is open from 5 a.m. to after 7 p.m., and serves more than 1,000 meals a day to the boarding and commuting students. Soups and bakery goods are made daily, and produce is trucked in by local organic-food companies.

While that kind of attention to menu variety and freshness might be expected at a school where the annual tuition is $25,000, Ojai Valley is hardly alone in providing attractive lunch selections.

In the Conejo Valley Unified School District, students can choose from Popeye Salad--a combination of spinach, lettuce and carrots--Brontosaurus Bites--dinosaur-shaped beef nuggets--and Cowboy Bread.

Cafeteria food may give rise to images of casserole and mystery meat, but things have changed at the school lunch counter. Stung by government criticism of fat-laden menus, school districts across the country several years ago began trying to provide healthier meals to students. Food-service supervisors became born-again converts to low-fat cooking.

The trend toward treating students less like hostages to the cafeteria line and more like customers in a restaurant is reaching a new level of sophistication across Ventura County. Schools are trying everything they can to persuade students to abandon mom’s bag lunch in favor of the day’s cafeteria special.

“We used to just think about getting kids through the line,” said Marilynn Wells, president of the California School Food Service Assn. “Now we realize they are our customers. We need to give them what they want.”

Silly names for dishes and contracts with nationwide food servers are all part of the effort to diversify menus. So is consumer research. Jerry Gaudite, a child-nutrition supervisor in Thousand Oaks, visits schools every day to see what students are eating. He will also stick his head in a trash can to see what they throw away.

“Face-to-face observation,” he said, is the best way to determine whether his menus are going over with kids.

In Ventura County, what goes over best is choice, and lots of it.

At Curren School in the Oxnard Elementary School District, students say they prefer traditional items such as corn dogs and hamburgers.

But pizza is their favorite, a choice that reflects a nationwide trend. According to a recent survey by the American School Food Service Assn., more than 65% of the association’s 400 food service directors ranked pizza the most popular food among students.

Hamburgers, calzone, eggroll and chicken sandwiches are also popular. Charles White, the child nutrition cafeteria coordinator at the Oxnard school, said the district is always looking for new entrees. Monthly meetings and student feedback help him plan the menu.

“They’re not bashful at all about telling you when they don’t like something,” White said. “They’ll tell you right away.”

Although students are now more likely to buy lunch at school than 20 years ago, White prides himself on keeping his customers happy. He believes the 400 lunches he serves each day show they are satisfied.

Sixth-grader Thomas Skurk is one of the enthusiastic customers. The 11-year-old usually hangs around the cafeteria after he finishes lunch, trying to coax the cook into serving him seconds.

“I like most everything,” he said. “I don’t know why. I just do.”

At Ojai Valley School, meals are designed to teach students about fine dining.

“We teach good manners,” Headmaster Michael Hall-Mounsey said. “We have assigned seats for some meals, so children have to get used to conversation with others.”

An eighth-grader is assigned to each table to monitor etiquette, making sure students put their napkins on their laps and don’t get too loud. All students are required to help clear the tables.

Once a week students put on their Sunday best for a dress dinner at tables sporting candelabra, fine china and cloth napkins. This helps students prepare for formal occasions away from the campus, Hall-Mounsey said.

“When they go to country clubs and the places they tend to frequent, the children are very comfortable,” he said.

The dining at Park Oaks Elementary School in Thousand Oaks is not so elegant, but it is enough to satisfy fifth-grader Bobby Scott. He gives his stamp of approval to the breakfast and lunch he buys each day.

Taco sticks, chicken nuggets and pepperoni hot pockets are among the favorites, but the Conejo Valley Unified School District features some dishes that won’t be found on other school menus, such as the Popeye Salad.

One of the most popular is Cowboy Bread, a light, coffeecake-like muffin coated with cinnamon. The recipe is unique to the area and made from scratch by the district cook.

Bobby’s favorites include Cowboy Bread and a chicken patty on a bun, though the recently introduced pizza sticks have been added to his top choices.

He and fellow fifth-grader Alexx Westhoff said they would choose school food over fast-food restaurants.

“At McDonald’s, it’s all the same,” Alexx said. “Here, there’s more of a variety.”

But food service experts concede fast food remains extremely popular with young people.

“I think the biggest influence on what kids like to eat, unfortunately, is the fast-food restaurants,” said Wells of the California School Food Service Assn.

Fajitas, beef bowls, pita bread and eggroll could not be found in school cafeterias until chains popularized them, Wells said. Authentic fast food is available at some schools, such as Moorpark High School, where McDonald’s and the Domino’s pizza chain provide lunch offerings.

For Oak Park Unified School District students, McDonald’s and other big-food company selections are the main courses. The affluent east county district serves Domino’s, Pizza Hut and even frozen Taco Bell burritos.

All fast-food selections are monitored by menu planners to help determine top menu picks, Wells said. And even those schools offering fast food must adhere to nutrition standards mandated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This increased emphasis on healthy lunches has forced menu planners to search high and low for foods low in fat and high in calories.

“It sounds easy, but it’s not,” said Conejo Valley child nutritionist Connie Noggle, whose title used to be food services director. “When you reduce the fat, you reduce the calories. But we also have a calorie goal that we try to meet.”

Nutritional standards are so important that an analysis comparing the week’s selections with the recommended daily allowance appears on all menus distributed to students and parents.

Nonetheless, students like the chain restaurant menus, said Virginia Leigh, food services director in Oak Park. Consequently, cafeterias, newly conscious of treating their students as customers, offer it.

Food provided by the big chains “is not a big profit item,” Leigh said, but “it’s a big popularity item, so it’s worth it.”