Dr. Virginia Stallings
Bonnie Safley

Iris Graham admits it — she’s a sneak.

But as food service director for Whitfield County Schools, she’s got to be a bit sneaky if she’s going to get students, especially the younger ones, to eat healthy food.

“We do a corn dog. We bake it, and it’s a turkey corn dog,” she said, lowering her voice. “An elementary student won’t eat a chicken breast if you just hand it to them, but they’ll eat chicken nuggets all day long.”

Ms. Graham is not alone in her craftiness. Schools all over North Georgia are trying all sorts of tricks to tempt students with healthier choices in the lunch line.

“If our children are better nourished, then that’s our goal,” said Michelle Coker, food service director for Walker County Schools.

To reach that goal, county systems in Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade, Dalton, Houston, Murray, Walker and Whitfield, along with city systems in Cartersville and Chickamauga, are working under the same healthy eating banner — “Pyramid Partners.”

Using the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “My Pyramid” recommendations as a starting point, the idea is to develop an alternative lunch pattern that gives students more choices, dietary variety and good nutrition, said Bonnie Safley, Catoosa County’s Child Nutrition Program director for the last 18 years.

The Pyramid Partners’ “alternative pattern” begins with at least seven food items at lunch, then lets students pick up to four fruits and vegetables, along with an entree, grain and milk choice.

“Vegetables are grouped so that, each week, a minimum of two deep orange, two dark green and two legume servings are offered,” Ms. Safley said. Starchy vegetables are limited, desserts are restricted, and deep-fat fryers aren’t used to prepare foods anymore, she said.

Healthier offerings have included fruits such as kiwi, pineapple, strawberries and blueberries matched with leaner cuts of meat and whole-grain breads, officials said.

North Georgia school systems using Pyramid Partners earned a “Best Practice” award from the USDA in 2007, she said.

The prevalence of obesity among children 6 to 11 more than doubled in the past 20 years, going from 6.5 percent in 1980 to 17 percent in 2006, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate among adolescents 12 to 19 more than tripled, increasing from 5 percent to 17.6 percent, the CDC reported.

In 2007, 13 percent of high school students were obese, according to the CDC, and 79 percent ate fruits and vegetables less than five times in a seven-day period.

With nutrition experts and government officials saying that childhood obesity is epidemic, Pyramid Partners mixes menu items with health education in class.

“You’ve got to do your homework in the classroom,” Ms. Coker said. “You’ve got to make sure they know they’ve got more choices.”

Vending machines remain a problem competitor with the cafeteria in high schools. Machines with low-nutrition foods such as chewing gum, sodas and certain candies are supposed to be off-limits during lunch but that doesn’t mean students aren’t using them, officials said.

STUDENTS WEIGH IN

In Ringgold, Ga., Heritage High School senior Cari Ellis said she likes the healthier menu over the ones she saw in middle school.

Choices on the new menu are “more, like, healthy and they tried to give us more of a selection,” Miss Ellis said. “They did a pretty good job of keeping the balance. They got rid of some stuff, but they replaced it with good stuff, too.

“I just pick what I like; I like the fruit and vegetables and stuff,” she said.

She rarely is turned off by all the choices, she said, but if she doesn’t see anything she likes, she heads for the salad bar rather than a vending machine.

Erin Lowery, an athletic eighth-grader at Catoosa’s Lakeview Middle School, said she seeks out healthier food to help her in her sports and avoids vending machines.

Her favorite entree of fish was offered under the old menu, she remembered, but nowadays the fish is “spicy, and I like spicy foods,” she said.

Like Miss Ellis, if Erin doesn’t like what’s offered, she said she heads to the salad bar.

In Walker County, Stone Creek Elementary School first-grader Cayley Murphy said she likes the cafeteria’s offerings, even if she’s not sure what they are.

Her favorite?

“Pizza,” she said.

Spinach is her least favorite, she said, but she still gets that at home from her mom.

NEWCOMER AND VETERAN

In Walker County, the Pyramid Partners program was eased into place beginning early in 2008, Ms. Coker said.

“We’ve been putting more choices on our menu for a year and a half, prior to starting this year, just to get our students used to seeing the variety,” she said.

Walker students are told to “make a colorful plate,” an easy-to-understand step that helps include the healthiest variety of food, she said.

Next door in Whitfield County, Pyramid Partners is in its fourth year, said Ms. Graham.

“We were the first group to go through a school meals initiative” to make sure menus were in compliance with federal regulations, Ms. Graham said.

The state recently did a five-year review of Whitfield schools, which the system “passed with flying colors” and “put the test to our plan,” she said.

“We are much more confident that what we’re offering to children is more appropriate in calories and in nutrition than ever before,” she said.

Students are offered small samples of new food in the lunch line to get them used to seeing it, she said.

Even salads are healthier, she said. Under the new scheme, officials shift the contents of salads from iceberg lettuce to a Romaine and spinach blend that’s healthier, she said.

Ms. Coker said Walker students’ likes and dislikes vary, so menus are works-in-progress this year.

“On one day, we’ll have pot roast and chicken pot pie on the winter menu. Some days they wipe out one, other days the other,” she said.

HIGHER COSTS

But providing healthy alternatives and more variety isn’t cheap, officials said. Schools have little documentation showing how much costs increased, particularly with inflated food prices during the flagging economy, officials said, but all agree that better eating comes with a higher price tag.

“We’ve had to watch, particularly when we tried to increase the fresh fruits and vegetables,” Ms. Safley said. “We have to watch, but we agreed that we don’t want to compromise.”

The system gradually took on the added costs as it implemented the new menu over the course of a year and a half, she said.

“I still feel like we could still add more fresh fruit,” she said. “Cost and availability dictates what we’re able to do.”

Dr. Virginia Stallings, chairwoman of an expert panel that prepared an Institute of Medicine report released in October that pushes a healthier approach to school meals, said costs might be higher in some cases but the expense is often offset in the switch from less healthy products.

“As you swap out to have more fruits, more vegetables and more whole grain products, each of those will have small incremental cost (increases),” Ms. Stallings said. “Some of it is taken care of because you’re just swapping one food for another, so it’s cost neutral.”

The report, “School Meals: Building Blocks for Healthy Children,” recommends many of the changes the Pyramid Partners are putting in place. Ms. Stallings said she’d heard about the partners, but hadn’t yet studied what they’ve done.

North Georgia’s experience with shuffling food costs and budgets probably will become common as school districts across the country move toward better meals, she said.

There’s hope the federal government will adjust the amount of schools’ meal reimbursements to cushion the shift, she said.

PDF: Pyramid guideline sheets

MyPyramid

Developed in 1992, the original pyramid translated nutrition recommendations from 1989’s USDA Dietary Guidelines and the Recommended Dietary Allowances into the kinds and amounts of food people should eat each day. MyPyramid replaces the original Food Guide Pyramid. The recommended amounts of the foods below depend on age and weight.

Daily guide:

* Eat at least 3 ounces of whole grains.

* Eat more dark green and orange vegetables than brown, and more dry beans and peas.

* Eat a variety of fresh, frozen or canned fruit, but go easy on fruit juices.

* Eat or drink low-fat or fat-free milk or other dairy products.

* Eat varied types of low-fat, baked, broiled or grilled meats.

For more information about MyPyramid and guidelines, go to http://www.mypyramid.gov/index.html.

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture

IN COMING DAYS

* MONDAY: Chattanooga’s Biggest Loser contestants will sweat through challenges. Metro.

* THURSDAY: Dr. Jay Marcum, a cardiologist and director of HeartWise Ministries, hosts a radio show to address eating addictions in particular. Life.

A DIETITIAN’S VIEW

Pamela Kelle, a Chattanooga registered dietitian and nutrition therapist, reviewed school menus from Hamilton, Catoosa and Walker counties and also reviewed the USDA National School lunch program guidelines.

“The menus offered in this area frankly do not look very appetizing from my perspective as a parent and as a dietitian,” she said. “It is apparent from looking at the menus that much improvement could be made to the offerings in our schools to help address the growing concerns about obesity in our country and certainly in Hamilton County and surrounding areas.”

Still, she said, the caloric distribution meets the nutrient needs set forth by the school lunch program. Blaming the schools is not the answer, she said.

She suggests parents teach children the following:

* Why the child should choose whole wheat when offered

* Why they want their child to choose fresh fruit or even canned fruit over sweet desserts

* Why they expect their child to drink milk with lunch

* Why they should look for and choose a variety of colors in their lunch meal

* Why the child should pick a vegetable every day (not fried)