Farm to School

On a recent Wednesday morning, Tami Murdica, walked into the central kitchen in Palm Springs Unified School District wearing a black hairnet and a navy polo shirt with PSUSD Nutrition Services embroidered on the sleeve. Around her, the steady thrumming of heavy machinery filled the air, mingling with the amped-up vocal strains of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin.'"

At 7 a.m., Murdica's nutrition services staff had already been working for two hours. By 2 p.m. they'd be done for the day.

Stainless-steel countertops laid out in parallel lines gleamed spotless under the flourescent light. Rows of machines with suction-cup fingers picked up paper containers two-by-two and placed them on a slow-moving conveyor belt. It smelled like warm, starchy rice. Down the line, a woman used two scoops to ladle freshly steamed brown rice, diced pieces of chicken and teriyaki sauce into each container.

Twenty feet away, Murdica and one of her staff members opened up a mountain of cardboard boxes filled with Persian cucumbers.

"Those are too big," said Murdica, looking at the dark, green cucumbers, each about six inches long.

She watched as the cucumbers were fed into an electric machine that ate them whole and spit them out as thin, crisp slices. The locally grown, organic cucumbers would be packaged in half-cup servings and shipped out the next day, destined to be chomped on by 25,000 hungry children.

Everything that's served is precisely measured for fat content, calorie counts and sodium levels.

Murdica's staff works in exactitude, like the well-oiled machinery that helps them make the food each day. Their assembly line serves more meals in 30 minutes than Denny's serves in a 24-hour period.

School nutrition looks a lot different these days. It's healthier and more regulated. And as the legislation has changed across the country, so have school kitchens. To handle tough changes to federal and state laws, more school districts have invested in central kitchens that can standardize the food, make it safely and produce it in great volumes.

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, the flagship of Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign, overhauled the federal nutrition standards for the first time in 15 years. It mandated that a fruit and vegetable be offered with every meal and that students take a half-cup serving. The legislation enforced strict calorie, sodium and fat limits and mandated that all grains must be whole grain rich. The law also established an annual $5-million competitive grant program for schools to receive assistance establishing farm-to-school connections.

But the law hasn't come without controversy. Since the implementation of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that 1 million fewer kids each day eat school lunch because they're not accustomed to the mandatory vegetable servings and whole-grain options. And the School Nutrition Association is lobbying Congress to ease up on the extremely strict salt restrictions, which they say makes kids turn their noses up at school food.

Though the legislation has yielded criticism, those who have worked in school nutrition for decades are adamant that even in an imperfect system, the increase in healthy food has been successful. The legislation, they say, encourages new ways to elevate student's palates, including bringing in locally sourced food.

On a brisk Tuesday morning, just one day before the Persian cucumbers were delivered to the PSUSD central kitchen off Gene Autry Trail, Bob Knight walked through rows of spindly cucumber plants growing on a 14-acre farm in Redlands.

The sun was just beginning to warm the air as it rose above the mountains, and Knight, a tall, lanky farmer, wore a wide-brimmed straw hat to shade his face. As he ambled across the property, he reached down among the prickly, dark green vines and picked a baby cucumber, deftly flicking off a delicate dried flower blossom that clung to the cucumber's end.

"It's ready to go," Knight said, taking a bite.

"The kids are familiar with it already because it looks like a pickle and they've all eaten a pickle."

The cucumbers, picked Tuesday morning, would be packed that afternoon and delivered to PSUSD the next day.

"What really delights me with kids eating our produce is that we're teaching them a standard of quality. We're making their palates more sophisticated," Knight said. "When they leave school they'll have expectations for what fruits and vegetables should taste like that they will not be able to shop at a grocery store again. They'll have to buy at a farmer's market."

As Knight's tall frame hangs over a cucumber plant, another local farmer drives up in a black pick-up truck with a delivery of basil to be added to the crates of melons, squash and peppers waiting in Knight's small packing house.

Knight's family has been farming on this same plot of land since the late 1800s. But what started more than four generations ago as a historic Redlands citrus farm has begun to change. There are still 100-year-old orange trees on the property, and Knight still lives in his great-grandfather's house, but he has started to rethink the way family farms do business.

Nine years ago, Knight founded Old Grove Orange, a farming alliance of 28 local farmers who sell directly to consumers, cutting out the middlemen and global distribution supply chain that bump up prices and increase the amount of time between harvesting and consumption.

Instead, Knight, who has been serving school districts for the past nine years, knows that the students who eat his produce will eat it that week.

"School isn't just for learning reading and writing, it's also learning how to eat and how to eat right and how to eat well and to love it," he said. "With farm to school, there's this opportunity to keep farming here forever as a healthy economic enterprise (and) as a healthy community enterprise that will make our community so much richer."

In the past two years, schools nationwide have increased their spending on locally sourced food by 55 percent, according to the USDA's Farm to School Census.

During the 2013-14 school year, more than 42,000 schools participated in farm-to-school programs. And 75 percent of those who participated in the USDA census reported that farm-to-school programs reduced food waste, lowered food costs, encouraged more kids to choose school meals and generated more support from parents and the community.

But the push for more produce and fresher food wouldn't have come without the steady tightening of nutrition standards.

About a decade ago in California, the state legislature began rolling out laws that placed restrictions on what could be sold outside of the lunch program. Student stores and à la carte vendors suddenly had to watch what they were selling. Soda machines, fast food, sugary drinks and desserts began disappearing from K-12 campuses.

Nationally the big change came with the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, which was passed in 2010 and began phasing in mid-2012. It required that all grains be whole grain rich, and it mandated that fruits and a variety of vegetables be served with every meal. And in order for schools to be reimbursed for the meal, students must take a half-cup serving of fruit or vegetables. Calorie, sodium and fat limits came under stricter guidelines as well.

But some say the nationwide overhaul of nutrition standards was too much too fast.

The School Nutrition Association is pushing back against parts of the legislation that they say make it too expensive and too difficult for schools to serve students. In particular, the SNA is asking Congress to lift the future limitations on sodium and to reduce the whole grain requirements to 51 percent whole-grain.

"The whole-grain tortilla has been a real problem for kids in the Southwest to adjust to because they just don't encounter the whole grain varieties at home or in restaurants," said Diane Pratt-Heavner, spokeswoman for the SNA. "We're seeing the same thing in different parts of the country. The bagels are a real problem in the Northeast, biscuits in the South, some schools have troubles with brown rice."

Pratt-Heavner said the issue is not about wanting to go back to the old days of serving food without oversight, but about giving lunch programs the flexibility to serve healthier foods that kids will actually eat.

"Our members are just as concerned about childhood obesity as everyone else, which is why we support limits on calories and fat and why our members are working so hard to offer more fruits and vegetables," she said. "But we've got to make sure that we aren't strangling the programs that we're trying to improve."

The new standards, particularly the fruit and vegetable requirement, have increased the cost of each meal by about 30 cents - a number that sounds small, but in a district that serves 20,000 meals each day, that 30 cents adds up to more than $1 million over the school year.

The unaccounted for concern-- an increase in waste across the country.

"The produce waste was huge. Our trash cans were full of fresh fruits and vegetables," said Stephanie Bruce, nutrition services director in PSUSD. "It's a shame, and it's true. A lot of students don't like to eat their veggies."

Students' tastebuds don't change overnight and getting them used to fruits and vegetables they may have never tried before has been a challenge, Bruce said, adding that sometimes even parents are unfamiliar with the produce that is served.

"That's been something that has been really difficult, to instill in them how important fruits and vegetables are," she said. "Many of them don't see them at home. It's an expensive item and if I have a choice of an apple that's 75 cents each and a box of Kraft macaroni that's 60 cents and you can feed the whole family, I'm probably going to go with that Kraft macaroni and cheese."

Since 2010, Bruce said PSUSD has spent nearly $100,000 more on produce per year. In Desert Sands, the school nutrition program has more than doubled the amount spent on produce in the last five years, increasing from $280,000 annually to $700,000 annually. This year CVUSD is on track to spend approximately $800,000. CVUSD recently received a federal grant for more than $476,000 to support their fresh fruits and vegetables program.

Despite the challenges, nutrition services workers say the changes are worth it, because students are slowly accepting the healthier food.

Bruce said the introduction of salad bars at elementary school sites has cut waste by about 40 percent because students get to choose the vegetables that they want to eat. And in Desert Sands, where salad bars are being gradually introduced in schools across the district, Central Kitchen Manager Jodi Schneider said they've seen waste decrease by about 25 percent since 2013.

The public perception of school cafeteria food, however, has remained stubbornly negative. A study published this year in the Journal of Child Nutrition and Management found that 37 percent of parents would be less likely to eat school food if they were a child now, and many parents were nostalgic about the food they remember from their childhood.

"The school lunches are horrible," said Monica Perkins, a parent with three kids in PSUSD. "Michelle Obama would be floored if she came and took a look at what we're serving kids."

Perkins, who says her family is "not perfect" and eats frozen pizza and frozen burritos every now and then, says her kids don't like the food.

"It's all junk food. The muffins are the worst (because) it's sweet. It's literally junk food," Perkins said. "They need to go back to the good old days with a tray of food, not packaged food."

In an informal survey conducted by The Desert Sun, which yielded 68 responses, Perkins was not alone in her reaction to school food. Of the responses, 72 percent of parents felt that the food was unhealthy, unappealing and worse than what they remembered as children.

One parent surveyed said, "Don't see how it could be any worse!!! Pre-made, pre-packaged, frozen, packed with chemicals and preservatives!!! The WORST!!! … Yes, the(y) trimmed the calorie count but increased the chemical count in the process! Nothing is FRESH, not the fruits or vegetables! Nothing is 'homemade!'"

Only 10.2 percent of parents felt that the choices were healthy and that there was enough variety, and 17.6 percent of parents had mixed opinions, saying that the food was healthier than when they were kids but less tasty.

Most of the parents surveyed were sentimental about the food they remember from childhood and preferred when lunch ladies cooked onsite at the schools. Parents are also critical of the small portion sizes.

Palm Springs Unified and Desert Sands Unified school districts in particular receive a lot of pushback from parents because the food is packaged in the central kitchen.

"That is something that we encounter. The food is 'packaged mysteriously somewhere' and 'What's in it? What did you guys put in it?'" DSUSD central kitchen manager Schneider said. "We don't. We pack now, it goes out within hours and the kids eat it oftentimes that day. If not it's the next day just like you would at home."

Schneider said the food is packaged in the central kitchen for food safety reasons. With tens of thousands of meals being served each day if the meals weren't sealed, it would leave the door open to the risk of E.coli or other food-borne bacteria, she said.

"Open food is not always healthier food," she said. "There have been instances throughout the country where open foods have been proposed to the children and there have been issues...That's the reason why we pre-packaged to keep the kids safe, to keep the food safe for the kids."

PSUSD nutrition services director Stephanie Bruce said having a central kitchen allows the school district to make food that ordinarily would have to be ordered from a manufacturer.

"In a central kitchen we can find something that the kids really like and then we can recreate it here, do it from scratch and do a much cleaner label or cleaner ingredient product than our manufacturers can," she said.

School nutrition directors and others in school nutrition services remain adamant that the food that is served in schools today is healthier than the "home cooked" meals parents remember.

"When I got out of college and started working, I was shocked at what we were serving kids, just shocked," said Wanda Grant, interim nutrition services director in Coachella Valley Unified School District.

When Grant began her career in school nutrition services more than 30 years ago, school cafeterias served "whatever was available." The food was hot and usually cooked on-site, but little thought went into the health consequences of what schools were serving to kids.

Grant, who earned her bachelor's degree in food, nutrition and institutional management and is a registered dietitian, said years ago school lunches were high in fat, sugar and calories -- all of the things known to be linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

"They used to have butter sandwiches," Grant said. "I started in school food services in the 1970s and honest to goodness we put out butter sandwiches."

The "stir the pot, serve it hot" mentality, as Grant puts it, was a reaction to the surplus food items the federal government was shoveling to schools.

"The government up to the early 1980s was giving us commodities - whatever was in surplus - and we were getting thousands of pounds of butter, and we were required to serve whole milk," Grant said. "So the meal pattern for many years had taught the American public to eat a high-fat diet."

Grant believes that high-fat diet that people grew accustomed to during their childhood contributes to the high rates of diabetes and heart disease seen nationally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that one out of 11 people have diabetes and one out of three adults have pre-diabetes. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women, and diabetes, obesity and a poor diet put people at risk of heart disease, according to the CDC.

Children who are overweight or obese are more likely to have pre-diabetes or diabetes. In the past 30 years, childhood obesity has more than doubled nationally. In the Coachella Valley, about 49 percent of children between the ages of 2 and 10 are overweight or obese. And about 35 percent of children between the ages of 11 and 17 are overweight or obese.

PSUSD's Bruce, who has been working in school nutrition for 16 years, said the "home cooked" meals many parents remember weren't necessarily healthier.

"We cooked like we cook at home and we didn't really give a thought to the nutritional value," Bruce said. "We menued according to the students' taste preferences not necessarily to the nutrition quality."

Some parents, though, have noticed a positive change in the kinds of food schools serve and applaud the effort. Anna Briones, a parent in CVUSD who went to John Kelley Elementary as a child, is one of them.

"I remember a lot of greasy stuff. A lot of the stuff was chicken nuggets, greasy pizza, even the soups were greasy," Briones said. "I see my sons going to school. They have a salad bar, and I take them to breakfast and there's fresh fruit, granola and yogurt."

Briones said she cooks for her family every night because diabetes runs on her husband's side of the family. She said good eating habits come from the family.

"I would sometimes overhear kids saying they don't like apples because they don't like the healthy option," Briones said. "They want the McDonalds kids meal, so then I thought 'Oh the school breakfast is good, you're just so used to eating fast food.'"

In CVUSD where Briones' sons go to school, there is no central kitchen. Briones said she's glad the food is cooked on site and that there are healthy options, but that she wouldn't mind packaged food if she knew it was still prepared locally.

Although things aren't perfect, the three school districts in the valley make a concerted effort to source as much food locally as possible. Something local is served with every meal. What school districts can serve is largely inhibited by money. Each meal served must cost less than $3 and meet all of the tough nutrition standards. Even when school districts order from manufacturers, the food must meet the nutrition standards and everything from chips to chicken nuggets are prepared specially for schools.

The menus school districts plan today still feature "kid-friendly" items like pizza, hot dogs and burritos, but school officials say there are healthy ways to prepare foods that kids will eat -- the pizza is made with a whole wheat crust, low-fat cheese and low-sodium tomato sauce, and the hot dogs are all-beef.

"The biggest thing is that (parents) think because kids are eating pizza, they're eating like Domino's pizza or Pizza Hut pizza that may not be as healthy for the kid," said Ryan Saunders, principal at Cahuilla Elementary School. "I remind them that we're taking healthy ingredients and putting it in a way that kids will want to see it and eat it. Yeah you may see pizza on the menu, but it's not greasy, fatty pizza."

Saunders says he makes it a point to eat the school meals frequently to ensure that it's good quality, and over the years he has seen a real shift in the nutritional quality and health options.

"The misconception I think about school lunch cafeterias that's out there is really that they don't do any cooking or prep, and that they all get prepackaged, it's all preservatives and artificial flavors and things like that," Saunders said. "And I'm not saying that's all completely gone in school lunches, but I can say at least in Cahuilla's perspective the emphasis is placed on making sure kids have access to hot lunches that's balanced and diverse."

That quest to bring fresh and diverse food to students has started to change the way school districts do business. In many ways, that desire to provide healthy, fresh meals, has brought food administrators and farmers together.

In the middle of the grove in Redlands, as the sun beats down on rows of fruits and vegetables, Knight makes his way along a path of dirt and climbs a 50-foot wind machine that helps keep the orange groves from freezing in the winter. He looks out over his 67 acres of citrus, as a freight train thundered through the canyon where the trees were planted. The same train, part of California's 6,800 miles of railroad, would pass through Palm Springs on the way to Yuma, Ariz.

"So much of the produce that we grow on farms now is really going to a global market. And if it's going to a global market, you don't know if it's going to end up in your neighborhood supermarket or if it's going to be exported to China," Knight said.

Produce for the global market must have a shelf-life of six to eight weeks, which means they are coated in chemicals and specially formulated waxes to keep them from rotting, Knight said.

"You have to assume that everything that you pick may go to China," he said. "So really, the fruits and vegetables that we're eating and getting at the supermarket are almost as processed as potato chips."

But when farmers know their produce is going to end up at their local school district the next day, they can skip the chemical process and deliver the produce almost as soon as it's picked.

Knight said over the years he has slowly seen more school districts shift to a farm-to-school approach.

"It gives the school nutrition program a mission," he said. "It's a way of getting the community engaged in what they do. It's a way of committing to the kids that they're going to get them the very best tasting and healthiest produce that they can - so it's a very inspiring kind of mission."

And school nutritionists say their mission is to cause real change in the American diet. They can't force kids to eat certain items over others, but they can give them the option to choose a fresh fruit, a vegetable or a salad and learn about healthy eating.

"Can school food service make a difference? Absolutely," Grant said.

As time has passed, Grant said she sees more and more people concerned about eating healthy and choosing fresh food over fast food, and she believes that change has been caused in some way by changes to the school nutrition.

"School food service should and could and will lead the way to teaching the American public to eat healthy over time," Grant said.