Posted at: 02/09/2010 6:53 PM
Updated at: 02/10/2010 5:07 PM
By: Dan Conradt

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Improving School Lunches

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- If a menu of teriyaki vegetable stir fry, five layer tortilla bake, and asparagus supreme sounds like something you might find at a restaurant, think again. It could be the next generation of school lunch. And this week, some local school cooks are learning how to make it happen.

School lunch is about to change.

"It's about being able to experiment and try new things," says registered dietician Debbie King.

School food service workers from around the area are spending part of this week in someone else's kitchen, learning to make school lunch healthier.

King says, "We really want them to eat more fruits and vegetables, we want to try to get them to eat whole grain."

"We worked on stir fry, a vegetable stir fry that was just like beef, but it was a soy product. It was very good," adds Becki Bjorngaard of Rochester Public Schools.

But even healthy food won't do any good if kids won't eat it.

Bjorngaard says, "If it doesn't look appetizing they're not going to try it, and if you can't get them to try it, they're obviously not going to eat it."

"And then when they eat it, they have to like it," exclaims King.

It comes at a time when first lady Michelle Obama has launched a campaign called, Let's Move.

"We want to get parents information so that they can make good decisions. We want to improve the quality of food in our schools," says Michelle Obama.

"Just this year we actually started k-12 offering a meatless option," says Angie Schuhmacher, a wellness dietician at Rochester Public Schools.

One of the goals of Let's Move is to eliminate childhood obesity in a generation.

"Childhood obesity can lead to many diseases, many different cancers, diabetes, it's making their whole lifestyle not the best they can have," says Schuhmacher.

"We think this has enormous promise that improving the health of our children and giving support to parents," says President Obama.

Kings says, "As a child if you get exposed to a variety of different kinds of foods, then your comfort foods are a bigger variety of foods. And kids really will learn how to make the right choice."
 
Later this week, we should get a little better idea how the new healthy dishes go over with students. Thursday a visiting chef will help the kitchen staff prepare lunch for students at Dover-Eyota Schools, and Friday they'll be at John Marshall High School in Rochester.