Great Valley schools make healthy food fun

The cheers started, then swelled, as Casey Caruso, wearing a broad-brim hat festooned with small, dangling fruit replicas, grabbed a mike in the cafeteria at Great Valley Middle School.

"The veggie ladies are back," she told her lunchtime audience of 360 sixth graders.

As Caruso and her partner, Trudy Skibbe, walked between tables, eager hands reached out to grab the treats they were serving: slices of butternut-squash pizza, cooked with onions, rosemary and olive oil, and topped with mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.

After tasting one, Siddesh Kumar said, "It was amazing; it was really very good. I don't know how they make healthy stuff taste so good."

Said classmate Milan Bicja: "I liked it, I would eat it again."

The snacks served at the "Farmer's Market" that Skibbe and Caruso, both retired teachers, bring twice a month to the middle and high school come from a district-operated garden, which also provides vegetables and herbs that are served on lunch lines throughout the year. The aim is to get children interested in growing and eating healthy food and to educate them about its nutritional benefits.

American schools are full of overweight children. A 2007-08 survey cited by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 17 percent of children and teens 2 to 19 are obese. That would include, for example, a 10-year-old boy who is 5 feet tall and weighs more than 115 pounds or a 10-year-old girl who is 5 feet tall and weighs more than 120 pounds.

Many schools have small gardens in which students grow plants, said district food-service supervisor Barbara Nissel. What sets the Great Valley one apart is its size: one acre. It cost between $12,000 and $15,000 to get started, mainly because of the cost of the fence that surrounds it, Nissel said. "If we had a smaller garden [without a fence] . . . you probably could do that for a couple thousand," she said.

"But we wanted to supply our meal program. That was the primary purpose," she said. "And you're not going to get the involvement that we've got here. You're not going to get the participation and the sense of adoption" with a smaller plot.

The garden, created in the spring of 2009, is set on a plot of land behind K.D. Markley Elementary School. Elementary school students prepare seedlings in their classrooms and in May bring them to the garden and plant them. School staff, community volunteers, and students participating in summer programs tend and harvest the crops while school is not in session.

This year, the garden brimmed with beans, broccoli, corn, cantaloupes, cauliflower, cucumbers, green peppers, onions, peas, pumpkins, watermelons, butternut and yellow squash, tomatoes (cherry, Roma and heirloom), red peppers, and radishes. Pumpkins are used for decoration and muffins.

Herbs were also harvested: basil, cilantro, dill and parsley. And flowers, to brighten up cafeteria serving lines: cosmos, daisies, daylilies, mandevilles, marigolds, morning glories, mums and zinnias.

The produce is processed in school cafeterias, frozen, and served to students throughout the year, accompanied by signs saying it came from the garden. Pickles are a lunchroom favorite, as is zucchini, either in muffins or in a "zucchini crab cake" that tastes like its namesake but is all vegetables and herbs.

"On the serving line, when they come through, [students] ask, 'Are these the pickles we planted? Are these pickles from the garden?' " said elementary school food services coordinator Mary Mayo. "They get so excited about it that they eat more - they come back a few times."

The garden program is not the only nutrition initiative in the district. In the cafeterias, there is no fried food (french "fries" are baked) and vending machines are stocked with healthy offerings, Nissel said.

This fall, for the first time, snacks were banned at elementary-school classroom birthday parties, long a potential source of parent-provided junk food. Instead, mothers and fathers are asked to bring nonfood gift items like stickers and pencils. The decision was made by building principals, Nissel said.

Tammy Marroletti, the cochair of the parent organization at Great Valley High School and for 14 years a member of the district's food service advisory committee, said she supports the decision.

"Parents innocently come in with sweets, cookies, and other snacks," she said. "It disrupts the day - the learning process. It can be very hectic; it can get out of hand.

"We understand that many children are overweight and don't get enough exercise. We know it's an important issue; it's a serious problem, and the schools have to address it."