JISD promotes healthy nutrition on campuses
By SHARON KERR Staff Writer

Newsboy photo/ Sharon Kerr JISD NUTRITIONIST KIM MALONE points out where to put the new 3-A-Day dairy vending machines in the Jasper Junior High cafeteria. Rowe and the the high school also got these machines that promote healthy nutrition lifestyles.

Healthy choices aren't hard to come by in school cafeterias, but parents may not realize how far the Jasper Independent School District goes to promote nutrition in schools.

One example would be that the empty calories of sugar-saturated carbonated drinks are long gone. Recently, three schools in JISD received new refrigerated vending machines. Rowe, the junior high and high school all received bright "Pick 3- A-Day" machines to promote the "bonehealthy" choices recommended by the www.3aday.org.

A grant from Dairy Max paid $3,000 of the $3,895 cost per unit. The district is allowed to put anything in the machines that encourages the consumption of dairy products.

Kim Malone, a registered dietician and the director of child nutrition for JISD, said she was pleased when Jasper students went to the Food Fair and seemed to understand the importance of milk in their diets.

By the way, "milk" for kids in schools isn't just the bland white stuff their parents drank. Borden now offers flavors of the season like orange dream, root beer, mint and bubble gum. Vanilla, chocolate and strawberry are everyday offerings.

Slammers come in flavors like Milky Way, Snickers and Three Musketeers, but these aren't high-calorie slabs of sugar and fat (candy bars went extinct on school campuses long ago, too). The Three Musketeers Slammer drink is 99 percent fat free and has no added sugar. A whole wheat honeybun, Malone says many parents do not realize "how much we are doing to offer healthier alternatives to popular foods."

She said they recently had a call from one parent who questioned whether corn dogs was a healthy meal. Malone said the corn dogs are baked, not fried, and the meat is reduced-fat turkey.

When trying to coax kids to eat right, Malone said it helps to offer the same products kids are used to eating, but lower in fat and more nutritious.

Another example would be the whole wheat crust pizza they recently sampled in Beaumont. It was a hit with staff and students.

She said the school board has been supportive in purchasing whole grain and low-fat alternatives, even when those items are more expensive. Now with the buying power of the regional co-op, prices are becoming more competitive and they are seeing more and more selection as vendors vie for the school market.

Malone said she did not want it to sound like all that JISD was doing was buying pre-packaged foods and heating them up. The district has a central kitchen near the junior high. They make approximately 2,000 lunches per day (in a district with 2,800 students), and many meals are prepared from scratch.

In addition to what most people consider a recipe, the child nutrition department has books of procedural recipes. The food safety plan requires that every recipe, even for something as simple as a biscuit, cover sanitation instructions, beginning temperature, hot (or cold) holding temperature, and storage.

The last deep fryer in the district is headed for extinction too. The high school will be the last campus to receive the Combi Ovens. They are designed to extract moisture so food has a crispy outside like fried food. The "combi" part means it can also be used like a standard oven to cook pizza or as a steamer for vegetables like broccoli.

In addition to lunches, the district provides about 1,300 breakfasts. Malone said the challenge is always to find a breakfast that is nutritious, easy to serve, and not too messy to have in the classroom. milk and juice is a typical breakfast that might be handed out in the classroom while teachers take roll and make announcements.

Malone says the more nutritionists study it, the more obvious it becomes that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. When they give children a meal in the morning, they see better attention spans and better behavior.

Special diets,

parental controls

JISD can and does accommodate special diets for children who have been diagnosed with diabetes, high cholesterol, or other nutrition related needs.

They routinely deal with things like lactose-intolerance by substituting soy milk. They will even administer special liquid diets, if that is what a doctor prescribes.

Because Malone is a registered dietician, she can offer counseling when a child has a particular problem affected by diet, as diagnosed by a medical professional.

Sometimes this may involve helping the child to make the best choices from the school menus. Or Malone has hand-outs the parents can take home and learn more about choosing and preparing healthy choices.

At the beginning of the school year, parents can set up controls in the school lunch computers. When a child goes through the line, they punch in their PIN number. The cashier sees any dietary restrictions such as allergies. When programmed properly, the computer will prevent a child with a peanut allergy from buying a peanut-containing product, for example.

With the computers, parents can also restrict the child to no snacks, or a limited number of snacks, and the computer will track that.

With Few Primary, Malone said they don't even allow peanutty snacks, because those students are too young to understand what allergies are and might offer to share.

Kids can still bring their own lunches at all schools, but they are not supposed to provide for another child (the exception is birthday parties). Schools also get to pick three exempt days a year for things like candy at Valentine's Day parties.