In the kitchen at Oakland’s Ralph Bunche High School, four teams of culinary students are sauteing, simmering and searing bite-sized chunks of antibiotic-free chicken, in a culinary challenge as riveting as any reality TV cooking showdown.
Simply stated, their goal is to create the ideal school lunch, and solve the riddle that many school districts face every day. How do you serve a school cafeteria meal that’s delicious and healthy, and that costs between $1 and $1.25 for ingredients — the typical budget for a school lunch nationwide?
“It seemed it was impossible,” said Noah Vinson, 17, after he and his cooking partner, Isiah Gibson, 18, put the finishing touches on their dish, an “Oaklandish chicken cheese sandwich,” styled after the iconic Philly cheese steak sandwich, with baked fries and a low-fat orange and vanilla creamsicle-type concoction. “I was thinking, you can’t even buy a bag of chips for $1.25.”
Vinson and his fellow Oakland culinary students were participating in the nationwide Healthy Schools Campaign’s Cooking up Change competition, which challenges teams of culinary students to whip up delicious meals while still meeting stringent low-fat, low-sodium, low-sugar federal nutritional guidelines. Plus, they have to keep it to a price tag of about $1 in food costs, what’s typically left over from federal and state reimbursement for lunch after you take out labor, facilities and other overhead costs.
More schools and school districts in the Bay Area are joining the farm-to-school movement by serving fresh, healthier, locally sourced meals at a reasonable cost.
Some are further along than others, such as Sausalito Marin City School, which in 2015 became the first school district in the nation to go all organic, non-GMO. Berkeley has been offering fresh, healthy and locally sourced foods as its standard fare for years, while others, like Pittsburg and Palo Alto, have gone to offering such meals on a more regular basis.
Districts such as West Contra Costa, Mt. Diablo, Antioch, Brentwood and Oakley have dipped their toe in the movement, offering pilot programs, such as California Thursdays, featuring locally sourced lunches one day a week. But they are still figuring out ways to overcome the barriers in providing such lunches every school day.
Sausalito Marin City has leveraged relationships with farmers and suppliers to go 100 percent organic, but its average food cost per lunch is about $2.50, said Judi Shils, executive director of Turning Green.
Shils helped spearhead a weeklong pilot project in West Contra Costa earlier in the year to offer organic foods that she hopes will be adopted district-wide.
The Berkeley district’s farm-to-table lunch program is about 12 years old, said district executive chef Bonnie Christensen. And it’s made a commitment to dedicate more funding to the effort, about $1.93 to $2 per meal, which it was able to do because residents voted about 25 years ago to pay higher taxes for better school meals, she said.
While the maximum rate of federal reimbursement for school lunches in the continental United States is $3.39 per meal, public schools in the Bay Area typically charge students anywhere from $2.25 to $4.50 or more, which pays for the costs of labor and overhead as well as food.
The proper infrastructure and equipment, as well as extra staffing, are needed to make healthier meals, said Jennifer LeBarre, Oakland Unified’s executive director of nutrition services. That’s why her school district is in the midst of building a $40 million central kitchen that will allow it to go beyond pre-packaged food most days of the week, she said.
,
Overhead costs aside, hitting that standard food budget of $1 to $1.25 per meal is not as daunting as it might seem because school districts save on costs by buying in bulk, said chef David Isenberg, director of the culinary program at Ralph J Bunche High School.
Nevertheless, “with just $1.25, you have to have real creativity,” said Xavier Gibson, 18, a senior who with his team crafted a whole-wheat burrito with chicken and pinto beans, fresh cole slaw and peach cobbler. “It’s super-difficult. The recipes we have now are totally different from what we started out with.”
They revised their original recipe many times, forgoing steak for chicken, leaving out the red and green bell pepper, squash and carrots, and trading out Swiss cheese for American, in order to whittle down the sandwich to 88 cents, which was topped with a serving of baked fries for 27 cents. But that still left just about 23 cents for a dessert. “We only had 23 cents left for it, and we were just sitting there, like, how are we going to do that?” Gibson recalled.
The teams had to stay within Michelle Obama-spearheaded Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act guidelines, which require that meals have no more than 10 grams of fat, range between 550 and 650 calories, and allow for only whole-grain, low-fat, low-sodium, low-sugar foods, Bunche High School’s Isenberg said.
The lunch tray that was crowned the winner of the contest was a Thai chicken roll-up with dipping sauce, steamed pepper broccoli and spiced apple sauce, created by 18-year-old seniors Jaye Poindexter and Jimmy Saliphan. Not only will the winning entry be served district-wide, the team will travel to Washington, D.C. to compete against other states’ winning teams for the national title.
Alva Spence, food service consultant for Palo Alto School District, said it has made an effort in recent years to not only step up its healthy, fresh food options but specifically cater to students’ tastes. It offers annual tasting days that invite students and staff to sample different dishes and vote on which they like best. In addition, it offers sushi and pho days that are wildly popular with students, all the while working to stay within that $1 to $1.25 window for food costs.
Considering the limitations, it’s easy to understand why so much of the food offered “is just not good,” said Xavier Gibson, Isiah’s brother.
“But more meals like this would bring out more people to eat in the cafeteria,” said Jamal Hurst, a 17-year-old senior. He and his teammate Yasmine Lewis, 18, made a California chicken burrito with a cole slaw and peach cobbler for the contest.
“It’s not really cafeteria food,” he said. “It’s more like a five-star meal that kids really would want to eat. And that would help more students not go hungry, and focus on what is being taught in class.”
