Group Wants to End Nacho Lunches in Cedar Falls

Does anyone really understand the nacho lunch?

That was one question posed at a community meeting on Feb. 8 to discuss bringing healthier and more local food into the .

A group of parents is banding together to challenge the way school lunch is approached in the district. They want to see the end of lunches that feature such unhealthy fare as nachos, corn dogs and cheese sticks.

“We started talking a couple of months ago and said we had to do something about the school lunches,” said Molly Taiber, a local parent who helped organize the group. “With everything that’s happening on the federal level and also locally, this is the time to do it.”

On Jan. 25, the federal government unveiled the first major nutritional overhaul of school meals in more than 15 years. The new guidelines include calorie caps on meals for the first time, a ban on most trans fats, decreases in sodium allotments over the next decade and requirements that milk be low in fat.

"This is the time to do it."

Taiber said the group hasn’t made inroads with the school district yet, but they’re hoping to work with whom ever is hired as the new food service director in the coming year.

Success in other districts

Getting local foods into school is part of a growing trend, often with the help of farm to school partnership programs that help match growers with educators. There are nine school districts in the Iowa Farm to School network, many added in the last few years. There are more than 2,352 farm to school programs, found in all 50 states.

At school in Cedar Falls, a group of parents formed in 2008 to help change the way the school approached its food. Serving local and fresh foods has been a focus ever since, as featured in the video above.

Down the road, Independence School District revamped its school lunch program under former food service director Kelly Crossley, who now works in Solon. The district now offers more fresh fruits and vegetables. There are still cookies, but they’re homemade, and made from whole wheat flour. The district had a food service budget surplus of $20,000 when Crossley left.

Sometimes buying from local growers is cheaper than other suppliers. Heather Widmayer is an organizer of the Iowa City school district Farm to School Chapter. She shared that group’s story with the 17 parents and community members gathered at Wednesday’s meeting.

She shared a price comparison from Iowa City. Apples, bought locally, cost the district $23 a case, compared to $36.80 a case from their conventional supplier. Local watermelon was 18 cents a pound, compared to the conventional supplier’s 44 cents a pound.

Not everything worked out so well. The Iowa City group purchased local lettuce at $3.15 per pound, which was below market value. The conventional lettuce supplier cost 82 cents a pound.

Such numbers illustrate that some things will be easier to change then others, she said. But changes in one area can pave the way for others.

Getting Local Food Into Schools Not Without Challenges

Both Independence and Price Laboratory have fairly small student bodies. Larger districts like Iowa City and Cedar Falls come with different challenges.

For example, it takes a long time to wash, chop and spin dry enough fresh lettuce to feed every student, as Widmayer said she experienced when her group had a Spring Greens Day as their inaugural event last year. Iowa City also faces challenges like limited preparation space (five kitchens for the district's 25 schools), limited storage space and inadequate supply chains.

She said there simply aren’t enough local growers willing to sell to the school district, for a smaller profit than they could get selling elsewhere, to meet the demand.

One area the group has had success in is starting school gardens.

“Our school garden project is out of control,” she said.

She said even if the whole menu isn’t changed, just making kids aware of where their food comes from is a good start.

“It’s the first step to changing the whole food culture,” she said. “We’re getting back to where things were just 50 years ago.”

Local Organization Could Help

Andrea Geary is a local food program manager at the Center for Energy and Environmental Education (CEEE). She and fellow CEEE organizer and former Cedar Falls city councilman Kamyar Enshayan helped the efforts at Independence and Price Laboratory and have been working with the Cedar Falls parent group.

“We’re really just trying to provide some resources to parents,” she said. “This is a parent-driven initiative.”

CEEE has been involved with the local food movement for more than a decade and is at the center of a well-developed network of local farmers and institutions related to the movement.

“We’re well equipped to provide resources, training, fundraising,” Geary said. “Essentially anything schools want, we’ll do.”

She said she hopes the parent’s efforts are successful.

“I mean, who doesn’t want healthy meals for their kids?” she said.