By: Hollie Hojek
hhojek@kcautv.com
Schools across the country are now serving up school lunches, with a side of flexibility. It all started when parents, teachers and even some students were saying they weren't getting enough to under the new federal standards for school lunches.
"Sometimes I leave feeling hungry..." said Sydney George, 4th grader at Hinton Community Schools.
Now the United States Department of Agriculture is removing the limit on the number of grains and meats that schools can serve, to try and curb the issue and students' appetites.
"We always get vegetables and nobody really likes to eat them, so we all eat meat," said Tate Lingon, 4th grader.
Kim Pope is the kitchen supervisor at Hinton Community Schools. She says, like the students, she's happy to see more flexibility added to the lunch menu.
"At this point now I can relax a little bit more, give them the extra cookie, give them the bigger sandwich, we can do that more now," said Pope.
When the national program started last year, schools were allowed to serve up to 18 grains per week, then that got knocked down to 10. But no the limits have been eliminated. And same goes for meat portions. Now schools can serve up to 15 proteins in a week. Before it was in the 9-12 range.
"That would sound better, because sometimes there's not enough meat it kind of feels like. Like today there wasn't enough meat on my plate," said Aislynn Haefs, 4th grader.
But the lunches still have to stay within a restricted number of calories. Which means some cuts will have to be made.
"We have a few things... a few desserts and a few mixed fruits that we add a little bit of sugar to. We'll have to pull that back out again in order to meet the caloric intake but that's doable," said Pope.
Pope says she will be able to implement the new flexibility on the menu right away. More drastic changes will be made to the lunch menus in 2013.
