The produce prep area of the Davis school district’s central kitchen is a particularly busy place this year.

Fresh fruit and vegetables — much of it grown locally — have always been an integral part of the district’s vaunted and nationally recognized school lunch program. But new federal standards aimed at producing healthier school lunches mean even more fruits and vegetables then ever before are being prepared at the central kitchen and sent out to the schools every day.

Everything from green salads to sweet peppers, sliced carrots to cut-up persimmons are washed, prepared and individually packaged at the kitchen to ensure each student receives the proper serving size required by law.

The only problem: You can lead a kid to the salad bar, but you can’t make him eat the broccoli.

Because while the federal standards which took effect July 1 require that every child receiving a free or reduced-price school lunch take at least one fruit or vegetable serving with their meal, much of that produce is ending up in school compost piles.

“I see lots of kids throw away fruit and vegetables,” said Kyle Caserza, an intern with Davis Farm to School who spends one day a week at Montgomery Elementary School.

But he believes it’s worth it in the end.

“The more we offer kids fruit and vegetables, make sure it’s on their plates, the more likely they are to eat it,” he said.

Caserza and the other Farm to School college interns serve as “taste testers” at the elementary schools, offering samples of cut-up fruits and vegetables to students waiting in the lunch line or already sitting at the lunch tables. He finds with the right approach and encouragement, he can get most kids to try a sample, and often, that’s half the battle.

Frequently, he said, it’s a fruit or vegetable that a student has never seen before and is wary of even trying.

As for the fruit and vegetables ending up in the compost, Chávez Elementary School has found a solution: a “share table,” where children can leave their unwanted, unopened school lunch items for other children who are still hungry to enjoy.

Still, it’s a challenge, particularly for Farm to School, which started an ambitious composting program at all of the elementary schools this year.

All that extra food being tossed out, said Julia Van Soelen Kim, program coordinator for Farm to School, “is making it tough for us to meet our compost goals.”

And the fruit-and-vegetable component of the new federal standards is just one of the challenges that has emerged.

The standards largely were intended to curb obesity among the nation’s children, and one of the major components is the minimum and maximum calorie limits set for school lunches.

The standards require that children in grades K-5 consume between 550 and 650 calories at lunch, junior high students 600 to 700 calories and high school students 750 to 850 calories.

It’s a one-size-fits-all approach that is not without drawbacks, notes kitchen manager René Hannah.

Hannah, who is in charge of school lunches at Davis High School, sees many students — particularly athletes — for whom that calorie limit doesn’t suffice.

“They’re still hungry,” she said.

At least her site offers an all-you-can-eat fruit and salad bar, she said, which helps.

But standards limiting meat to 2 ounces for high schools students (1 ounce for younger students) took many students by surprise this year.

Caserza noted that teenagers, especially athletes, need more calories than that at lunch, particularly if they will be participating in a sport right after school and won’t be eating again until much later.

“That is definitely an issue,” he said.

Other new standards offer challenges to the kitchen staff itself — particularly the sodium guideline.

School districts must reduce total sodium in lunches by 11 percent for the 2014-15 school year and by 54 percent by 2022.

The big challenge will be to suppliers, particularly those who provide bread to the school district, Hannah said.

“And cheese will probably be gone from lunches completely,” she added.

Van Soelen Kim said the hope is that the food industry will reduce sodium in commercial products as well over the next decade, “or school lunches will taste like cardboard in comparison.”

Other guidelines lay out the types of vegetables that must be served each week (including dark green, red/orange, legumes and starches), types of fruit allowed (fresh, canned in juice, water or light syrup, frozen without sugar or dried) and milk allowed (fat-free or 1 percent).

Saturated fat must be less than 10 percent of total calories and transfats less than 0.5 grams per serving.

At a gathering at the central kitchen on Thursday, teachers and parents expressed support for the changes overall. They were there to tour the central kitchen and hear more about the new standards, as well as to learn more about the nutrition advisory committee, a joint project of the school district’s Student Nutrition Services and Davis Farm to School.

The committee is open to all parents, teachers and interested community members and will be meeting twice more during the school year, said Julia Van Soelen Kim, program coordinator of Davis Farm to School.

But she hopes there will be enough interested participants willing to meet in small groups more frequently throughout the year to tackle some of the issues that came up on Thursday.

To learn more, contact Van Soelen Kim at [email protected] or call 530-219-5859.

— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] or 530-747-8051. Follow her on Twitter at @ATernusBellamy

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Sande Royval explains how the lidding mating works to seal food in recyclable containers during a tour Thursday of the Davis school district’s central kitchen. Fred Gladdis/Enterprise photo

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Sande Royval, left, DJUSD district deputy secretary, and Julie Van Soelen Kim, program coordinator of Davis Farm to School, open the doors to the dispatch refrigerator, which holds produce and ready-to-deliver items, during a tour Thusday of the central kitchen. Fred Gladdis/

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Sande Royval, right, the Davis Joint Unified School District’s deputy secretary, leads members of the district’s Nutrition Advisory Committee on a tour of the central kitchen Thursday. Fred Gladdis/Enterprise photo

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