Saratoga News

Salad bars will grace the school cafeterias this fall

By Michelle Alaimo

Brightly colored child-sized salad bars will grace elementary school cafeterias in the Saratoga Union School District beginning this fall.

The innovation is the result of the district Wellness Committee's recommendations approved in late March.

The Wellness Committee was formed more than 10 years ago by parents and teachers to address student health. The committee has introduced a number of topics for student discussion, including asthma, AIDS and the "growing healthy" program, which teaches students how to take better care of their bodies.

Funding for each of the $700 salad bars and new refrigerators to go with them came from the cafeteria budget.

The schools will also have more on-site cooking at each school to ensure fresher food, said Ann Berger, the district's food services director. Currently, frozen food is brought in and microwaved.

The schools have already gone to lower-fat items such as low-fat cheeses and vegetarian burritos. "We do the best we can to keep the meals as healthy as we can, but the idea is for the kids to eat it," Berger said.

To ensure children make the right choices in the cafeteria, they must be taught about disease prevention in the classroom, according to William Gloege, a Wellness Committee member since its inception. To accomplish this, he said, existing materials must be assembled and distributed to teachers.

Gloege said parents need to bring this information to schools and classrooms because the American diet is a cause of one-half to two-thirds of all diseases and cancers.

"School is a place to learn to cope with life," he said. Students may think what they are eating is not hurting them now, Gloege added, but bad food choices will affect them later in life.

To help fund materials for the new curriculum, the Wellness Committee is also applying for a grant from the California Wellness Foundation. Gloege said the money would be used for designing nutritional materials and hiring a nutritionist.

Gloege said the Wellness Committee conducted a survey to see how parents felt about disease prevention.

Of the 190 households receiving the survey, 44 percent responded. Because of the high response rate, the committee concluded the results would be representative of all parents in the district.

The survey asked parents to answer questions about their children's eating habits and how they felt about physical education classes and about disease prevention being included in the curriculum.

The answers showed that parents overwhelmingly supported the idea of disease prevention being taught in the classrooms. The published results said, "Parents stated that a good, healthy and vital body is needed to properly take advantage of and absorb the academic material we ask our children to learn."

Parents were also highly critical of cafeteria food. One parent commented on the survey, "How many adults would eat these meals, or even consider joining the children for lunch?" Sixty-seven percent of the respondents asked for healthier food on the school lunch menu.

The California Wellness Fund grant money would also fund training of P.E. teachers and the purchase of more playground equipment. This would help address parents' concerns about the lack of quality P.E. classes and activities in the district.

The published survey results stated that 88 percent of the parents found P.E. to be very important to a child's health, fitness, coordination, cooperation and self-confidence. Respondents said they would like to have more equipment and organized sports in the school.

The salad bars, filled with such items as fruit, raisins and croutons, have arrived and will be set up for use in the schools beginning in the fall.

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