Eat More, Waste Less

(4/17-4/30) Food Service

Kids Eat Sauerkraut?

This past week, I was able to complete a plate waste study on, get ready for it… sauerkraut. Food service establishments have a huge impact on food waste and sustainability. They can either really harm the environment or benefit it by practicing waste management. One of the assignments for the internship was to study the plate waste at my food service site. My preceptor and I decided to study sauerkraut and use this to justify keeping the item on the menu. To gather my data, I stood by the food dump area and visually observed the servings of sauerkraut that were wasted. I don’t think I have ever stood by a trash can longer than this, nor do I ever want too again. Anyways, the results of the study found that 10% of the sauerkraut served at the school was wasted. Here in Lebanon, sauerkraut is a common item served with hot dogs; it surprised me to see the number of students who like it. Because it is a staple item, contributes little waste, and is inexpensive, we decided to keep sauerkraut on the menu. From completing this study, I met CRDN 1.4: conduct projects using appropriate research or quality improvement methods, ethical procedures and data analysis utilizing current and/or new technologies.

Extra Thoughts

After spending a few weeks in school nutrition, one question that has arose is how to increase the nutrition of school meals while keeping foods that kids will eat. This concept is one of the hardest things Child Nutrition Directors come across every day. School meals have strict guidelines they must follow to keep them somewhat nutritious for children. However, children still tend to eat foods higher in saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar even while eating at school. French fries and mashed potatoes still count as a vegetable, and pop tarts or donuts are provided as the breakfast entrée. Although these products may be lightly salted, baked, or “whole grain”, making them “healthier”, they are filling kids’ plates before whole fruits and vegetables even make it to the plate, lowering the nutritional density of the meal as a whole.

There are newly proposed updates to school nutrition standards by the USDA that will make school meals more nutritious if passed. These proposals include lowering the sodium per week, limiting high sugar items, no flavored milk for grades K-8, and serving primarily whole grain products (Food and Nutrition Service, 2023). These proposals may sound good at first but hear me out. This is going to severely limit schools on what they can purchase and incorporate into meals. Current regulations already are a challenge for schools to work with all while serving meals kids actually eat. If passed, it is only going to be more difficult for school food service to both create meals and encourage intake of those meals. To make school meals more nutritious, instead of increasing limits on certain nutrients, why don’t we serve more fresh, even local, produce and encourage students to take more of these and less of others through increased promotion and advertisement. This will not only allow the same menus to be produced for kitchen staff satisfaction, but it will keep the foods kids eat and hopefully increase their intake of the foods they should be eating more of.

Throughout my food service rotation, I have learned more about myself and career interests. As mentioned in my first few blogs, I really enjoyed my community rotation. I loved working with patients and guiding them to meet their health goals. I actually prefer it more than being behind the scenes at a computer all day, which is a lot of what school food service entails. However, I am not going to count out school food service although it isn’t at the top of my list. After seeing the smiles on those kids faces, my heart melted, and I wouldn’t mind feeding those little hungry bellies in the future :).

Written by Brianna Starr, UK Dietetic Intern

References

Food and Nutrition Service (2023). Proposed Updates to the School Nutrition Program. Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture.