Byline: Bob Condor
At the private Ross School in East Hampton, N.Y., the students in 5th through 12th grades eat breakfast and lunch in the same 'cafe' as teachers and staff.
'It's multigenerational,' said Ann Cooper, executive chef and director of wellness and nutrition at the school. 'No one gets different or better food.'
What everyone gets is 'regional, organic and sustainable' food.
The menu includes items such as vegetable salmon quesadillas, Tuscan bean soup, spinach salad with blue cheese and bacon, carrot herb bread, sauteed chicken with roasted eggplant, basmati rice with mushrooms and jerk tempeh (a soy 'meat') with fried plantains. Pear sorbet is a typical dessert item.
Breakfast features muffins baked from scratch, hand-mixed granola, fresh fruit, yogurt, organic milk and a hot entree.
Student favorites such as macaroni and cheese or pasta with tomato sauce are served 'about once a month' because they are popular. Cooper serves hamburgers about twice a year.
Most often, she is devoted to building variety into the menu based on connecting to the local food supply. Consequently, she buys produce only when in season, then freezes sauces and whole fruits and vegetables for the hundreds of recipes used during the school year.
'We try to buy local first even if it's not organic produce. We make the effort to understand the local farmer's use of chemical inputs and how the food is grown.
'Sometimes it is more important to sustainability (of the local economy) to buy conventional. We can help farmers make the transition to organic.'
Just about now, skeptics are thinking, 'OK, sure, fine, it works in the Hamptons on Long Island at a private school with tuition rates that match or exceed many people's annual mortgage payments.'
Eyebrows might raise a skooch higher when you find out Ross can be described as an alternative-education school.
Cooper anticipated the doubters. She oversees the preparation of more than 1,300 daily breakfasts and lunches at both the Ross School and a nearby public school. She wanted to show it can fit into the taxpayer education model.
What's more, Cooper is helping to recharge the lunch programs of the New York City public schools. As part of the city's Community Food Resource Center, which has received a Kellogg Foundation grant to plot better nutrition for school kids, Cooper will develop recipes and provide solid proof that good food doesn't have to cost more.
She started the Ross initiative in September of the 2001-02 school year, confining to within the same food-service budget limit as used in the previous year. The program will be positively reviewed in a Harvard University study to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Cooper discussed her work as the guest speaker for 'Better Food for Our Children,' a luncheon held recently in Chicago.
'We're just in the preliminary stages in New York City,' said Cooper, author of 'Bitter Harvest: A Chef's Perspective on the Hidden Dangers in the Food We Eat' (Routledge, $29.95). 'The first goals are to lower fat content and encourage the students to make healthier choices toward whole fruits, vegetables and grains. At this point, we're not even mentioning organic. We have to start somewhere.'
Cooper emphasized that a good place to start in any school district is eliminating junk foods, such as sodas, chip snacks and candy. She doesn't oppose the use of vending machines, but wants them filled with 100-percent juices, spring water, all-fruit rollups and other healthful drinks and snacks.
'Organic milk is dispensed in school machines in upstate New York,' Cooper said. 'It's possible to be healthy across the board.'
Surprisingly, Cooper said, the Ross students expressed little reluctance at the radical menu change.
'We give them numerous choices each day and really work on communicating to the students,' she said. 'We walk the dining room and ask them what they liked and didn't like. We want them to taste and try everything. The kids always find something to eat.'
One contributing strategy is to require each Ross student to plan and prepare an entire healthy meal before he or she can graduate. The students do it as part of a health class that covers sustainability of local farms, organic food supply and balanced nutrition.
'We are educating the kids and their palates,' Cooper said. 'Their palates do change. They become much more open to eating different foods.'
Different as in better_but the same as the teachers and staff.
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(Bob Condor writes for the Chicago Tribune. Write to him at: the Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.)
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