Sorry, Kids: No More Doritos

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by Melissa Bailey | Nov 8, 2010 12:36 pm

(14) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Food, Schools

Melissa Bailey Photo Mary Lou Mignosa is still selling her wares in the Metropolitan Business Academy cafeteria, but she has no more cheese puffs—just water and cartons of milk.

“They do miss the snacks” said Mignosa (at right in photo) of the students at the business-themed high school on Water Street.

That’s because an effort that started last year to get the junk food out of New Haven’s schools has spread to the most difficult terrain—high schools, where students have stronger opinions about what they will and won’t eat.

Mignosa has worked in New Haven school cafeterias for 31 years. As recently as last year, she would roll out a cart of snacks through the Career High cafeteria after students picked up their hot meals. On her cart, she offered cheese puffs, sour cream and onion potato chips, and Cool Ranch Doritos, as well as more healthful options like Nutri-Grain bars. She also offered fruit punch and orange and apple juice.

The foods were the only semblance of junk food in a district that had already eliminated vending machines, fried food and sodas in accordance with state regulations.

The snacks were popular, Mignosa said. They were meant as a supplement to the standard kitchen fare.

When students returned to the school in the fall, they found no snack cart rolling through the cafeteria. The district got rid of snacks, following a city-wide effort to get kids to eat more healthful foods.

The city’s nine high schools stopped selling snack foods this fall, according to food services director Tim Cipriano. Snacks were removed from elementary schools in April 2009, he said.

“We want to focus on the meal of the day,” Cipriano explained. The hot food line provides “a better quality meal than snacks.”

The district also stopped offering chocolate milk in all schools this year, Cipriano said. There’s no dessert except about once a month. Even then, there’s no chocolate in sight—just fruity alternatives such as apple crisp.

Now Mignosa and her kitchen team have only two items up for sale: Marcus 1 percent unflavored milk, and Crystal Geyser “natural Alpine spring water,” bottled in New Hampshire.

“Where are the snacks?” students asked Mignosa at the beginning of the school year, she said. “I don’t know—we’re not allowed to sell them,” she would reply.

In two lunch waves last Monday, cafeteria worker Doris Highsmith (at left in photo at the top of this story, with Betty Isler at center) sold six bottles of water, she said.

Other than the reduced milk choices—“they’d rather have chocolate milk”—most kids don’t complain, Highsmith said. The snacks of yesterday are “out of sight, out of mind: They don’t see it, they don’t ask for it.”

The district bought about $75,000 of snacks last year, and sold them basically at cost to students. The district probably lost money on the operation, he said, because unlike the school meals, snacks aren’t eligible for federal reimbursements.

“Kids miss the snacks,” said Cipriano, “but we’re looking at it from an educational standpoint. We shouldn’t be in the junk food business when we’re trying to teach kids [how to eat] good food.”

Nixing Doritos is part of a citywide plan to get kids to eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, to tackle childhood obesity.

In high schools, changes to the food menus are taking place more gradually. Last year, all elementary schools rolled out Meatless Monday, where no meat was offered on the first day of the week. The point is to offer “lighter fare” that’s “healthier,” Cipriano said.

High schools followed suit this year, sort of. On Metro’s Meatless Monday last week, the main entree, cheese lasagna, was vegetarian. Mignosa also put out some new spinach salads, packed neatly in plastic boxes.

But students could still pick up hamburgers and meat at the deli bar.

“High school kids make up their own minds” about what they want to eat, Cipriano said. So he makes sure there are traditional favorites, such as Chicago-style pizza, so that kids won’t skip the meal.

One student was spotted buying a bottle of water Monday—and nothing else. Jermaine Young, a senior on the school basketball team, said he was forgoing lunch that day.

“I’m an athlete,” he said, “so I can’t be slacking.”

Nearby, ninth-graders ZioMary Vazquez and Shawna Bobbitt (at left and right in photo) both skipped past the Meatless Monday lasagna and grabbed more standard fare: A ham sandwich and a slice of cheese pizza.

They had their own solution to the dearth of portable junk food. Vazquez said she packed her backpack with Kit Kats and M&Ms leftover from Halloween.

Over by the window, senior Elliot Velazquez brought one item that had been removed from his school this year: A bag of nacho cheese Doritos. He said he brought it from home.

“I used to eat lunch” from the cafeteria, he said, but “they give you the same options every day.”

Whatever choices adults make for kids, he said, “it’s up to the students, regardless,” what they want to eat. “We can still bring our own lunch,” he said.

Cipriano said in the year ahead, he plans to introduce more healthful options, including beans and a mac and cheese recipe with cauliflower and sweet potato hidden in the sauce.

He predicted that over time, high-schoolers would adapt to the new options. If students’ diets change in the K-8 schools, he said, “their palettes will change.”

By the end of five years, he said, the new way of eating will reach high schools. “They’ll be used to it.”

Comments

posted by: What??? on November 8, 2010 1:28pm

Once again, business casual is optional at our business high school? Elliot, the boss will notice your shirt and tie long before he worries about the doritos you brought for a snack…Keep up the good look!

posted by: MOM on November 8, 2010 2:32pm

Taking Chocolate Milk out of the schools is not in the student’s best interest. They are not drinking the white. My child told me that there is an abundance of waste because kids won’t drink the white. Please pick your battles wisely. White milk is less expensive who are you trying to fool. This is not the army and all kids are not obese. As a parent it is my job to make sure my child gets the proper nutrition. My son wants us to start bagging it.

posted by: meta on November 8, 2010 2:53pm

Snacks or not, we should not be advocating bottled water consumption in schools. Students should be given tap water in reusable bottles. The economical and environmental costs of bottled water can not be justified. (In the United States, bottled water costs between $0.25 and $2 per bottle while tap water costs less than US$0.01 and creates lots of waste: “Bottled water produces up to 1.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. According to Food and Water Watch, that plastic requires up to 47 million gallons of oil per year to produce. And while the plastic used to bottle beverages is of high quality and in demand by recyclers, over 80 percent of plastic bottles are simply thrown away”..)

Let’s all agree to stop participating in obviously detrimental practices!!?

posted by: Cross Students on November 8, 2010 3:25pm

It looks like the food at Metro is similar to (a little better than) the food at Cross. So I think what I’m going to say is valid.
I don’t mind them trying to get junk out of the school. I think it’s good for them to try to make it easier to eat healthily. HOWEVER, if they’re going to do this, they NEED to make our lunches better. As things stand right now, lunch is absolutely disgusting- there are no other words to describe it. The pizza (not very healthy at all) is the only thing that is consistently good; apart from the occasional lasagna or pasta dish, the food is literally inedible. If they’re going to push the junk out, they need to make sure they’re replacing it with healthy, edible food.

posted by: Threefifths on November 8, 2010 4:05pm

About time they get this junk out of the schools.

http://www.internationalnews.fr/article-how-we-became-a-society-of-gluttonous-junk-food-addicts-38494039.html

http://www.indypendent.org/2009/07/23/bacon-as-weapon/

posted by: nfjanette on November 8, 2010 5:10pm

That is nasty looking pizza and a disgrace to New Haven’s proud heritage. As for the snack policy, despite the clear spin of the article, I predict it will be a loss. Without providing alternative “healthy” snacks, the students will simply bring their own.

posted by: Kathy H on November 8, 2010 6:01pm

I think the removal of chocloate milk is because of the high sugar content. To top it off the sugar is usually in the form of corn syrup. The following is an interesting article about it in another district:
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/nov/21/nation/la-na-chocolate-milk21-2009nov21
It is a great treat but none of us should be giving it to kids on a daily basis. Of course, we run into the dame issue with “fruited” yogurt.

I applaud the district for its efforts. I still struggle with why my daughter finds so much of the food unappealing. Change takes time for all of us.

posted by: Mother of school children on November 8, 2010 9:09pm

That’s fine that they take away the snacks and the chocolate milk but they can at least give the kids white milk that is not expired. At least 6 days this year both of my sons came home complaining of expired milk. When they get sent home with a belly ache, the school complains that the kids are always sick. The milk has a date on it, the rest of the food doesn’t. How do we know how old the food actually is? I’d rather give them doritos that haven’t expired.

posted by: cecilia proto on November 9, 2010 7:07am

I totally agree with taking junk food out of the cafeteria. The problem is that this education on nutrion, needs to start in kindergarten. They have no structure at home on eatting habits. I,ve watched kids on Grand Ave. buy junk food for breakfast for 35 yrs.They don,t even know what salad is nor do their parents. Store carriage,s are filled with soda, snacks, and frozen foods. Community gardens should be a learning process in New Havenm let them plant and eat. I know its going on in some places in New Haven.

posted by: streever on November 9, 2010 12:42pm

This is great. (However, the food doesn’t look great to be honest. That pizza looks like it is not remotely healthy. Pizza can be RELATIVELY healthy without being tasteless.)

Temptation is harder to resist as you add temptations. Taking the junk away, so it isn’t even an option, is a great way to help kids.

posted by: Threefifths on November 9, 2010 6:45pm

posted by: streever on November 9, 2010 11:42am
This is great. (However, the food doesn’t look great to be honest. That pizza looks like it is not remotely healthy. Pizza can be RELATIVELY healthy without being tasteless.)

Temptation is harder to resist as you add temptations. Taking the junk away, so it isn’t even an option, is a great way to help kids.

Pizza is junk food.But I forgot you like Cheese.

While Warning About Fat, U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales
A government-created industry group worked with Domino’s Pizza to bolster sales by increasing the cheese on pies.

By MICHAEL MOSS
Published: November 6, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/us/07fat.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

posted by: streever on November 9, 2010 8:45pm

3/5th,
you didn’t forget: I actually don’t enjoy cheese and don’t eat it. However, I strongly believe that discerning adults can choose to eat what they like, and I look at real world data (like France) where people live long, healthy lives despite eating cheese and drinking wine.

posted by: Threefifths on November 9, 2010 11:39pm

posted by: streever on November 9, 2010 7:45pm
3/5th,

you didn’t forget: I actually don’t enjoy cheese and don’t eat it. However, I strongly believe that discerning adults can choose to eat what they like, and I look at real world data (like France) where people live long, healthy lives despite eating cheese and drinking wine.

You must have missed this data.They have one of the best health system.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=12683

And they don’t have the crooked two party system.They have proportional Represention.

posted by: Threefifths on November 10, 2010 10:57am

Hey Streever.Forgot.Check this data.

Research Reveals
Vegetarians Live Longer,
Are Less Prone to Disease.

http://www.vegparadise.com/news44.html

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