Many soup companies have made lowering sodium a priority. Campbell Soup Company, Camden, NJ, announced in October 2008 that it had reformulated and expanded its line of soups served in schools. The line now includes lower sodium formulations of soup flavors that are especially appealing to kids.
Eat your vegetables
Of course, getting kids to eat their vegetables may be one of the biggest obstacles school foodservice directors face. One vegetable that kids have developed a fondness for is sweet potatoes. High in vitamins C and A, they are also a good source of fiber and are fat-free. Often, schools introduce vegetables in familiar foods or mixed with popular foods. Mixing half sweet potatoes with half regular baked fries, for example, introduces kids to a new food in a familiar form.
Similarly, adding vegetables to pasta dishes or on pizza is a great way to get kids to accept vegetables. Controlled-moisture, fire-roasted and grilled vegetables reduce labor in a school kitchen. “What is especially attractive about these products is that they are ready to eat and don’t require a lot of prep,” says Clark.
“Manufacturers can help schools by continuing to be a helpful player. They need to be willing to have flexibility, do their research and development and continue to tackle the new challenges, like sodium restrictions―which will be hard to do because of palatability issues,” says Peterson. “Taste testing is important and has to go hand-in-hand with nutrition education. Kids have to like how the food tastes.”
That said, Peterson has seen that exposing kids to new things can create trends in what kids like. One company mixed cream cheese with yogurt that had live cultures and tested it on kids to see if they liked it. Kiwifruit was introduced to another group of kids who ended up loving the color, the flavor and the fact that they could scoop it out with a cool plastic spoon. And hummus has become a favorite food for a lot of kids, served with carrot sticks or pita chips.
There are still a lot of chicken nuggets, pizza and french fries on school menus, but new formulations have made them more nutritious, even if they look the same.
Nancy Backas is a Chicago-based freelance writer and chef. She has been writing about food and the foodservice industry for more than 20 years and can be reached at
nback@prodigy.net.