Charlotte County Public

Charlotte Health

Schools Teach Kids to Eat Healthy

Charlotte County Public School students are learning healthy eating habits, and they’ve even acquired a taste
for broccoli! And it’s all because of the School Food and Nutrition Services Department — better known as Champs Café — run by nutrition expert Terri Whitacre.

“Our goal is to create lifelong healthy eating habits in our customers, and that means preparing quality nutritious foods that they will choose and eat,” said Whitacre, director of Champs Café and its 159 child nutrition professionals. Nationally certified as a School Nutrition Specialist and employed by the school district for 29 years, Whitacre refers to students as customers. After seeing the quality and variety of food she serves them, it’s easy to understand why.

Goodbye Mystery Meat

Gone are the cafeteria meals of yesteryear that might bring to mind high-calorie, starchy foods and few, if any, vegetables. Today in Charlotte County’s public schools, meals are prepared in 15 state-of-the-art kitchens, most of which are peanut-free. Like any good restaurant, meals are timed and not cooked in one big batch.
When a student orders steamed vegetables, for example, their vegetables are served al dente, not mushy.

High school students choose from a variety of meals at food-courtlike cafes — roast turkey, grilled chicken, turkey deli sandwiches, lasagna, teriyaki beef dippers, chef’s salad and those all-important veggies are all on the menu daily. Elementary and middle school students select from an array of popular and nutritious entrees that were chosen based on taste-tests with customers while keeping nutritional value in mind. For example, although corn dogs appear on the menu, they are turkey dogs with a multi-grain coating.

While many of us may remember green beans and corn as the veggies served in our cafeterias, Champs Café offers an extensive variety of steamed vegetables, such as broccoli, carrots, peas, mixed vegetables and Oriental vegetables. There’s also cabbage, corn, spinach, beets, peas and carrots. Green beans are not the only beans on the menu. Champs also has fresh cole slaw and potato dishes. Fresh vegetables are available, including salads, relish cups, baby
carrots and cucumber circles. Fruits are varied as well, running the gamut from apples to kiwi with many in between.

Whitacre said that unlike most school districts that offer one vegetable, Champs Café asks students to choose two. This increases the odds that the child will actually eat a vegetable. Lunch isn’t the only meal served at Charlotte County Schools.

Port Charlotte High School’s Champs Café serves up a wide variety of healthy dishes in a food court-like setting

Knowing that “a hungry child does not learn well,” some of the district’s schools serve more than 300 breakfasts to students in the 30 minutes before school starts. Freshly made oatmeal is offered to every customer at every school each morning. Some 1.5 tons of whole grain, old-fashioned oats were prepared last year, Whitacre said. Breakfast menus also contain items such as an egg, ham and cheese bagel sandwich, juice and low-fat milk.

With such an array of healthy and nutritious meals to choose from in the paid school lunch program, one might think that it would be costly. Well, think again. Whitacre and her staff recently conducted a “packed lunch versus school lunch” survey to determine which meal would be less expensive. Shopping at a local Wal-Mart, the staff found that a nutritious school lunch would cost $1.90 versus the less-nutritious Wall-Mart meal, which would cost $2.63.

Education is Key

The staff at Champs Café also focus on educating children on healthy food choices. “We noticed that a lot of our customers did not care for broccoli, a nutrient-dense vegetable,” Whitacre said. Her staff set out to change all that by teaching students about broccoli, and their efforts paid off. In 2004, the USDA awarded a Best Practices award to the district for demonstrating an increase in fruits and vegetables, thanks to their Broccoli Campaign.

“Thanks to that campaign…we now serve more than seven tons of fresh and frozen broccoli each school year,” she said. There are education committees at all 20 schools, and kitchen tours are offered to students so they can experience “behind the scenes” meal preparations, Whitacre said. Additionally, parents are invited to join staff members for breakfast or lunch to experience for themselves the wide variety of healthy choices offered to their child
each day. Managers sometimes go into the classroom to introduce a new food, teach a lesson on the importance of breakfast or help students choose from their lunch menu.

Whitacre blames restaurants for “portion distortion.” She said bad eating habits among our youth have caused an increase in obesity that can lead to diabetes. And that’s exactly why Champs Café is such a refreshing change to the fast-food mindset. Whitacre and her staff have done a lot to improve the things our children are eating on a daily basis, “from eliminating chocolate milk as a choice at breakfast to increasing legumes such as kidney beans, black beans and chick peas in lunch menus.”

A list of healthy changes made to Champs Café school meals over the last 20 years can be seen at the Champs
Café Web site, www.yourcharlotteschools.net/Departments/ Champ/champs.html, along with nutritional information on
each monthly menu.