Back to school brings new lunch regulations

You remember your school lunch days–pizza, chocolate milk and dessert?

Not any more.

“Students will be required to take at least one-half cup of either a fruit or a vegetable,” Culver schools’ Nutrition Services Supervisor Diana Cretsinger said Thursday.

With new U.S. Department of Agriculture lunch regulations going into effect this year, your child’s lunch tray could look considerably different.

Cretsinger said an example of a new menu item will be the “Garden Sloppy Joe.”

“That would basically be a sloppy Joe, like you would know it, with more veggies in it and ground turkey instead of ground beef on a whole wheat bun,” she said.

Out are most of the sugars, high fats and refined grains.

In are more whole grains, fruits and veggies.

Even the classic milk carton is subject to the new rules.

“We as a school district have opted to only serve chocolate milk once a week as a treat,” Cretsinger said. “But the new guidelines require that we offer two types of milk, meaning a nonfat and a low-fat.”

The new rules are sending Cretsinger back to the cookbooks.

“We kind of work as a team to make things work, and if it doesn’t taste well, we try to figure out what we can add to make it taste well, so that’s where the creativity comes in,”she said.

Even small things like condiments make a big difference in the healthiness of a meal.

“Condiments are definitely kind of turning into a thing of the past,” Cretsinger said. ” A lot of sodium in condiments that are really regulated now, so we’re getting creative with ranch dressings by using Greek yogurt, low-fat yogurts — that type of thing.”

Cretsinger said she knows kids don’t like to see a lot of change, especially when it comes to meals, but she hopes making healthy tasty will pay off.