Category: Food for Thought

Planning healthy and enticing meals for one child can be a challenge. So how do School Food Professionals plan good and good-for-you menus for hundreds of hungry students every school day? To Esther Huizar, cafeteria manager for Oak Valley Union Elementary School District in Tulare (Central California), it requires creativity, with a big helping of preparation and coordination. 

“I try to plan everything out ahead of time,” Esther said. “That way we have what we need to make home-style meals students can enjoy.”

Whether in large or small school districts, these tricks are used by School Food Professionals to plan mouthwatering menus that keep kids coming back for more.

1. Start From Scratch 

The best way to plan a healthy menu for your students is to start from scratch. Making meals from scratch using simple, healthy ingredients provides better nutrition, leading to healthier exercise and eating habits and stronger cognitive functioning. “That’s my biggest goal here at Oak Valley,” Esther said. “To cook more from scratch. More fresh fruits, more fresh vegetables. We’ve improved a lot.”

2. Choose the Foods Kids Love

If you want kids to eat healthy foods, you need to make healthy foods kids want to eat. That means adapting the foods kids love with fresh and healthy ingredients. Making pizza? Top it with healthy veggies, or even create your own farm-fresh kale pesto sauce. Making quesadillas? At Oak Valley, Esther and her team give this favorite a healthier spin by cooking with whole wheat tortillas, low-fat cheese and low-fat chicken. They even make their pico de gallo from scratch.

3. Fresh Marks the Spot

To give your students the most flavorful possible meals, go with what’s in season! Many schools use a Harvest of the Month program to highlight a particular ingredient in their menus. Not only does it keep ingredients at their freshest, but it provides a great opportunity to educate students about agriculture. “We have a little farm, and last week, we used fresh lettuce that our kindergarteners helped to grow,” Huizar said. “They brought it to the kitchen, and we made a salad with it. The kids were so excited.” 

4. Have a Plan. And a Plan B

Planning menus for entire school sites is a big job. So it’s important to look ahead and map out what you plan to cook over time. Many schools and districts use a six-week cycle for lunches, which allows for variety without having so many recipes that it’s difficult to keep staff trained on how to make them all. Getting all those ingredients sourced and in the right place on time is a delicate balance, even when everything goes right. And that’s not always the case.

 “Sometimes a delivery doesn’t get here on time, so I have to have a plan A, B, and C.” Esther said. “You look around at what you have and start from there. Maybe we were going to have chicken tacos, but there’s no tortilla. So we put the chicken on some chips with cheese, and the kids love it.” 

Fresh, healthy meals make a huge difference in any child’s life. Creating menus that get them not just in the door but excited to dine is critical to making sure kids get what they need to succeed in the classroom and beyond. Pulling that off means working right at the intersection of planning, playfulness and passion. 

“That’s what’s so great about this job,” said Esther. “It’s all about food, about celebrating, and that’s what I do.”

You have to be quick on your feet if you want to grab a muffin at the Del Mar Elementary School cafeteria in Santa Cruz, California, because they go fast. The popular whole grain muffins are the special recipe of Prep Cook Nancy Gonzalez.

“I bake them at home, and my daughters would always tell me ‘You should make these at school, so all our friends can try them,’” Nancy said.

Nancy’s daughters were right—the muffins were a hit among students. Now they are one of the many delicious recipes served weekly to students in Live Oak School District.

 

Starting from Scratch

In Live Oak’s central kitchen at Del Mar Elementary, School Food Professionals are creating a new vision of what a school food program can be — one where fresh, locally grown ingredients, scratch-cooked meals and hands-on culinary education for students are the norm.

Live Oak’s innovative school food program features healthy scratch-cooked meals, packed with flavors kids love and provided to more than a thousand students every school day. Led by Kelsey Perusse, a registered dietitian and the Director of Child Nutrition Services, the district’s team of School Food Professionals are redefining what school food can be, bringing in good and good-for-you recipes, diverse perspectives and new approaches to preparing and cooking student meals.

“We’re trying to do incredible, innovative things,” Kelsey said. “Part of the way to do that is to have a strong, innovative team of School Food Professionals who are passionate about that work.”

 

Hands-on Experience and Opportunities for Learning

For students to build lifelong healthy eating habits, it’s important for them to understand where their food comes from and how to make their own delicious and nutritious meals.

At Live Oak, students get the chance to follow their food from seed to tray. In partnership with local nonprofit Life Lab, Live Oak runs an agriculture education program that gets students involved in the farming process — planting, growing and harvesting crops, and bringing them to the district’s central kitchen. Back in the central kitchen, Live Oak’s Food Lab program gives students hands-on experience, helping to transform that produce into fresh and tasty meals for their classmates.

One recipe that came from the garden-to-cafeteria partnership was a kale pesto. In March 2024, Live Oak had an abundance of kale in the gardens. So, students got creative and turned that harvest of kale into a flavorful pesto sauce that was then used to make two delicious lunch entrées: kale pesto pasta and freshly baked kale pizza.

“We encourage kids to find out about nutrition and develop their culinary skills at a young age,” said Yumery Salazar Rivas, who works in Live Oak’s Child Nutrition Services department. “They get to learn scratch cooking in a real kitchen, and they produce enough food for all our school sites.”

Enabling kids to learn how to cook and design new meals has been a great educational experience. And it has helped the district more successfully align their menu offerings with the tastes, preferences and cultural backgrounds of their students. After all, kids know their taste buds best! And by using local produce and minimally-processed ingredients as the foundation of school menus, School Food Professionals are helping students create healthy eating habits for life.

Seeing students take part in making meals that reflect who they are is one of the things that Yumery loves most about the program. “Kids are helping our School Food Professionals make scratch-cooked enchiladas and other great meals for their fellow students,” she said. “That’s something I definitely didn’t see on the menu when I was a kid.”

 

Fresh, Healthy and Local

Through committing to healthier meals, Live Oak’s team is also building a healthier community. By buying from local farms and producers, they’re able to get the freshest possible ingredients while supporting local Santa Cruz businesses.

Live Oak’s team prioritizes getting to know their farmers. Many of the farmers they buy from are supported by the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association, a local nonprofit that helps people create and run their own organic farms, and the district supports a wide range of other local producers.

“We get squash, kale and peppers from Brisa Ranch in Pescadero and apples from Billy Bob Orchard in Watsonville,” said Kelsey. “And our beef comes from Richard’s Regenerative Ranch up in Lafayette.”

 

Cooking Up Something Special

The kitchens at Live Oak School District are making more than just great meals. Their team of School Food Professionals is creating a model for a new kind of school food program while cultivating healthier futures for kids and communities. And it’s a team they’re proud to be a part of.

Nancy has been offered other positions in the school, but she always turns them down. Being in the school kitchen, cooking delicious meals for students, is where she wants to be. The students agree.

“They’re always calling for me, ‘Nancy! Nancy!,’” she said. “They always say ‘I know you cooked this, because it’s so delicious.’”

To learn more about how Live Oak School District is cooking up healthy meals and futures for their students, follow them on Instagram @LiveOakSDNutrition.

The switch flipped for me when I was in college, studying to become a registered dietitian. Part of our program included visiting large-scale food operations, and so I got to learn about the world of school food by going to Long Beach Unified School District and seeing the amazing work that they were doing. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a School Food Professional. I wanted to change school food by cooking great food for kids.

Since then, I’ve been able to live my dream as a School Food Professional at Western Placer Unified School District in Lincoln. My team and I are responsible for preparing, cooking and serving about 1,200 breakfasts and 4,200 lunches to students every school day. 

Our goal is to prepare scratch-cooked meals that are made with high-quality, locally sourced ingredients that our students absolutely love. A lot goes into making that happen, and it can take months to bring a recipe from an idea to the cafeteria tray. 

We start by surveying kids and parents, finding out what they like, what’s working and what could be better. Next, we need to source enough fresh, quality ingredients to make thousands of meals — and we prioritize working with local farms in California that can provide us with fruits, vegetables and other items.

Once we’ve got a recipe we like, we taste-test it with students to make sure they like it. Flavor is everything. Yes, it needs to be healthy. Yes, it needs to meet our various program requirements. But our job is to make food that does all that while tasting great. One of our latest student-approved, taste-tested recipes is cornbread, which we made from scratch with local flour and cornmeal. When  offered this recipe at a recent school-wide event, a site administrator shared that it converted them from a lifetime of disliking cornbread into its newest fan!  

After receiving student feedback, our team moves to the next step: recipe standardization. Not all of our cafeteria kitchens have the same equipment or facilities, so recipes have to be adapted to meet the needs of all our school sites. This means our chef develops recipes with various preparation methods to achieve the same results consistently throughout the district. It’s an intensive process, but the result is a win-win for everyone. 

Most importantly, none of this could happen without our incredible team. They have embraced our scratch-cooking journey, challenging themselves to grow while cooking amazing meals for our kids. They work hard together, even completing supplemental trainings through organizations like the Culinary Institute of America Copia Campus, Brigaid and the Institute of Child Nutrition to develop and expand their culinary skill sets, all because they’re excited to cook better food for students. They’re also participating in other professional development opportunities like Chef Ann Foundation’s Healthy School Food Pathway Pre-Apprentice and Apprentice program. 

I get really excited when I think about what is happening in school food now and the potential of school food. In addition to supporting the health of students by cooking great meals that help them thrive in and out of school, School Food Professionals are a vehicle for changing local food systems and supporting their communities. We’re supporting our community by making fresh, delicious meals that our kids really enjoy. 

So many districts across California — Vacaville Unified, Madera Unified, Mount Diablo Unified, and Marysville Joint Unified, just to name a few — are making fantastic, flavorful, locally sourced meals, like fresh-made sushi or local halibut for fish tacos. Madera Unified is even roasting turkeys — not only for Thanksgiving, but also their daily sub sandwiches! 

My dream for school food is for it to be truly student driven and culinary focused. That means menus that are student approved, filled with menu items that taste great that students want to eat. I want to make sure we use high-quality ingredients from local producers. I want that to be the norm for students. And it can’t happen without School Food Professionals and the skill, creativity and care they put into these menus. 

I love being a School Food Professional. This is the most exciting time to be in school food. More and more districts across California are sourcing local produce, hiring chefs, developing delicious recipes, and cooking high-quality meals for their students. I can’t wait to see where school food is going to go.

Any parent can tell you that what their child eats has a clear connection to how easy it is for them to focus and engage. Diets filled with sugary snacks and processed food make it hard to sit still, pay attention and learn. Fresher, healthier meals, on the other hand, are directly connected to better academic performance. 

Decades of research shows that healthier eating leads to better outcomes in the classroom. Kids who eat quality school meals show improved attendance, behavior and academic performance compared to those who don’t.  

The power of healthy meals to help students succeed is clear. But how can we make sure all California kids have that advantage? 

 

The Secret Ingredient: School Food Professionals

There are School Food Professionals throughout California who are committed to improving school food to help ensure our kids are ready to learn. They recognize the benefits of providing high-quality meals to students from kindergarten to 12th grade. But providing fresh, flavorful and healthy meals to thousands of students every day requires more skills than ever before — from meal planning, sourcing ingredients and following nutrition and dietary guidelines, to cooking good and good-for-you meals that kids like to eat. 

Many schools and School Food Professionals are moving towards scratch cooking — they are developing healthy recipes using fresh ingredients and flavors kids love. Nearly 1 in 3 school districts in California report high levels of scratch cooking and momentum continues to grow. Achieving this change requires learning new skills and embracing innovative approaches, yet more and more California schools are rising to the challenge and making freshly prepared meals for their students.

School Food Professionals like RJ Lane, District Chef with Richmond’s West Contra Costa Unified School District, are making better school meals a reality. “The whole state is moving towards better, fresher meals and incorporating more scratch-cooked foods into their lunch menus,” Lane said. “That isn’t just making a difference in the school, it’s making a difference in the whole community.”

By making sure our kids are able to focus, learn and succeed in school, we’re helping them get on the path to stronger and more successful futures. Fresher, healthier school food programs that are powered by skilled School Food Professionals are key to making that a reality.  

I’ve got two missions. Day-to-day, I just want to see kids eat well with a smile on their face. But my larger mission is to raise a generation of healthy eaters.

In our school district in Santa Cruz, and in many other California school districts, they have a harvest of the month. It’s whatever’s seasonal, whatever’s local. In March, our harvest of the month feature is kale.

I had one student who every day said, “I don’t want to take a fruit. I don’t want to take a vegetable.” One day, our chef made these fresh kale chips, so I told the kid, “I have a deal for you. If you eat one kale chip, you don’t have to take a cup of fruit today. Just eat one, and we’re good.” He said, “OK, I’ll take that deal.”

He ate the kale chip. Afterwards, he lit up and did this dance. He said to me, ”I didn’t know I could be a kale chip kind of guy. Can I have some more?” I said, “Of course.” But the part I loved the most? A while later, his mom came up to one of our lunch staff and said, “Can I have the recipe for those kale chips?” 

Things that might feel small to us as adults can be a massive part of a kid’s childhood. One day, we decided to make kale chips. It seems like an insignificant decision. But now here’s this student, who didn’t even want a vegetable on his tray, much less to eat. And now he wants kale chips at home. That’s when you start thinking, “Oh, wait: We’re changing the way kids are eating.”

The school lunch that we’re serving now isn’t the school lunch that maybe you grew up with. We’re trying to do incredible, innovative things. I had a mom come up to me and say, “I’ve been feeling guilty because my kid wanted to eat school lunch, and I kept thinking, the meals probably aren’t very good. But now I see you’re serving all these great foods.” That’s why it’s so important to incorporate parents into the process, so that they see how school food is changing.

I’m just one person in one school district. But I’m part of a larger movement in California, and we’re making changes together. People are really thinking about how we teach kids to eat well in schools, so they want to eat that way for the rest of their lives. 

This job is always worth it, because you know that you’re showing up, giving kids great food and laying this very strong foundation to raise healthy eaters for life.