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Harris Bilingual Elementary School in Fort Collins, Colo. saw many students throwing away fruits and vegetables at the end of lunch, wasting both food and money for the school. So the school decided to make a change and let the kids pick fruits/veggies that they like to eat!
They implemented a fruit and salad bar into their cafeteria, allowing the school to abide by nutrition standards while giving kids healthy foods they wanted to eat.
“Alison, que quieres? Oh, broccoli, tambien,” says Kate Kosakowski, a teacher’s assistant at the school. She gives the pigtailed kindergartner a pat on the back and places several florets on the tray. Kids speak in both English and Spanish throughout the school week at Harris. Poudre School District, which includes Harris elementary, serves almost 15,000 meals a day.
The salad and fruit bar is a staple of this lunchroom. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated its school nutrition standards, mandating more fruits and vegetables on students’ trays. Some schools found that there was more food going in the trash after these changes.
“Our goal as a department and a district is to make sure the last kid has the same choices as the first in the variety and the quality,” says Craig Schneider, director of nutrition for the Poudre School District. “But we also don’t want to have so much food out there that it’s being thrown away.”
By The Numbers
142
Percent
Expected rise in Latino cancer cases in coming years
