From the Boston Globe 9/22/04
HEALTHY PLATEAt a Brookline school, lunch just got better
As concerned parents, Dr. Hope Ricciotti and her husband, Vincent Connelly, were displeased with the high-fat and high-sugar snack options at the school their sons Joe, 10, and Leo, 8, attend. With support from other families and the school administrators, the couple joined a committee that eliminated the empty-calorie foods from Brookline's John D. Runkle School.
But, as it turned out, that was just the beginning. Spurred by their initial success, Ricciotti and Connelly helped launch a revolution to improve the quality of the food service program throughout Brookline schools. This year, students can anticipate baked -- not fried -- chicken, vegetarian burritos, fresh salads with mixed greens, and lentil-barley soup. Tofu is no longer an exotic food: It's an ingredient in meatballs.
"Getting rid of cookies and sweetened juices was our first priority," says Ricciotti, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Connelly is a professional chef who cooks "delicious and healthy" meals for the family, according to his wife. "Nutrition is very much on our minds," says Ricciotti, who with her husband recently authored "The Healthy Family Cookbook" (W.W. Norton & Company).
The couple wrote their book and took action in their local schools to address the fact that an alarming number of children in this country -- an estimated 15 percent -- are either overweight or obese. One solution to the crisis, the doctor and chef decided, is to show that it's possible for schools to offer nutritious and good-tasting food. Getting rid of soft drinks was easy compared with their next goal of implementing healthier options -- as the reform-minded parents soon learned.
Last winter Connelly got the go-ahead to prepare from-scratch lunches at Runkle, using recipes he developed. "We got a new food service director, Gail Koutroubas, and the parents wanted changes. Gail decided it was worth the experiment," says Peter Rowe, Brookline's deputy superintendent for administration and finance. What no one realized in the planning was how little actual cooking is done in school kitchens. Much of the food is brought in partially cooked.
More than 50 years ago, when school lunch programs began, dishes were freshly prepared, according to Koutroubas. Now, many schools depend on heat-and-serve meals. "Vince thought they'd have industrial-strength kitchens, but instead the school had an oven and two gas burners," says Ricciotti. Not only was Connelly constrained by space, his budget couldn't exceed what the school would otherwise be spending on lunches. So he -- like many school lunch directors -- turned to the federal government's commodities program. He based recipes on ingredients, such as rice, turkey, lean ground beef, and beans, that the government provides to schools at reduced prices.
Commodity turkey has become turkey wraps with whole-wheat tortillas, lettuce, tomato, and a little cheese. Connelly's freshly made soups include split pea, barley, potato, and broccoli. There is no disguising that the menu has less fat and sodium and more fresh fruits and vegetables than before. But the chef does not venture far from children's comfort zones, says his wife.
"When we first proposed this [menu change], Peter Rowe asked if it's going to be tofu and alfalfa sprouts," says Ricciotti. Well, the tofu is there, but not in a way that students would notice. "They took commodity ground beef, of which we had a ton, and put in some spices and tofu, and the kids thought [it was] delicious," Rowe says.
There are several reasons students are embracing the new plan, say supporters. Dishes look familiar. When Connelly uses tofu instead of some of the beef in meatballs, he hides the new ingredient in the blend. The healthier foods taste like what the children are used to. Part of the new program included letting the older students sample first. When they accepted it, they created a positive buzz for younger children. Parents also came to do tastings. Children need to try a new food several times before they're comfortable with it, and the sampling program allowed an easy adjustment. "We marketed the food through tastings and turned around the image," says Rowe. "The kids thought the tofu meatballs were delicious."
Nothing says success like sales. Between February and May, participation in the school lunch program increased by more than 20 percent, according to Rowe. Connelly turned the running of the Runkle kitchen over to the staff. This fall he will serve as a consultant to Brookline Food Services to plan and launch reforms in the town's elementary schools and high school. Koutroubas has already been involved at the high school, bringing in vegetable platters with dip, a salad bar, a wrap station, and a pasta bar. She anticipates even more changes.
"I think you can do this anywhere," says Rowe. "We started off with an incredible group of parents with the incentive and time to do this.
"There is good food out there. You don't have to rely on the lowest-common-denominator processed food," he says.
