In 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act overhauled federal nutrition standards for school meals. At Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS), the sweeping reforms have resulted in what Registered Dietician Nutritionist Jodi Jocks calls a careful “dance” – balancing mandated nutritional requirements against student demand for items like hamburgers, pizza and chicken nuggets. At stake? School revenue and the ongoing fiscal sustainability of the district's food program.

TCAPS Food & Nutrition Services Director Tom Freitas oversees an operation that includes some 6,000 school lunches served daily. He's tasked with making sure five required food components – meats/meat alternates, grains, fruits, vegetables and milk – are included on every plate. Portions must meet strict caloric, sodium, fat and sugar standards, and come in under a cost (to the district) of $1.25 per meal. After all of those requirements are met, Freitas faces one final hurdle: getting students to actually purchase a lunch.

“That's the thing a lot of of people don't know about food service – we don't get funding from TCAPS,” Freitas explains. “We buy all the food and supplies and pay for our staffing. The students are our customers. It's important to run it like a business and make enough money to break even every year.”

Freitas employs a two-fold approach to generating “business.” First, staff continually look for ways to make the program's most popular items healthier (like using gluten-free crust and local marinara sauce for pizza, or offering baked whole-grain chicken nuggets). Second, the district utilizes its numerous local farm and distribution partnerships to introduce students to new products that will gradually alter their long-term eating preferences, acclimating palates to kale chips, hummus wraps and locally grown produce.

At five of TCAPS' elementary schools – those with the highest rates of free and reduced lunches – educators work directly with students on school gardening projects and “new foods” surveys. At Traverse Heights Elementary, neatly tended garden plots sit next to handmade signs labeled “Kale” and “Tomatoes” and “Mint.” Jocks says a group of students recently tested out a new apple crisp recipe featuring local apples; they provided feedback on whether they 'loved it,' 'liked it' or 'tried it.' “We try to avoid negative (language) around food,” Jocks explains. “We like to say, 'don't yuck my yum.'”

At the secondary level, both Traverse City Central High School and Traverse City West Senior High School have food advisory committees. Students are invited on field trips to taste-test potential school lunch products, and to weigh in on projects such as TCAPS' conversion of an old school bus into a food truck (when complete, the truck will be used for school picnics, tailgates and fundraisers). Seeing other students engaging with food in healthy ways is a form of “positive peer pressure,” says Jocks.

Local partners including Oryana, Cherry Capital Foods, Goodwill and the Michigan Land Use Institute – which recently launched an initiative to match TCAPS' 10-cent government reimbursement for local produce purchases, doubling the district's buying power – have further expanded TCAPS' ability to highlight local products. “(These programs) helped get our price point down,” says Freitas. “Early on, people thought we were this huge cash cow. But when you're putting together a meal for $1.25, you can't be paying 50-60 cents for an apple. We'll buy a lot, but we have to get it in under budget.”

Modifying cafeteria staples, engaging students with new flavors and partnering with well-connected community groups have all helped TCAPS slowly change the “culture” of its food program, say staff. But challenges remain: While the district has voluntarily exceeded some federal guidelines – banning all sodas, red dye and high-fructose corn syrup, for example – other food products, like lunch proteins, are still too expensive to source as locally and healthily as Freitas wants. Unusually high snow-day rates in recent years have impacted the food program's budget, as has the 100-200 decline in daily meal sales since the new guidelines were enacted – a trend reflected nationwide.

But as students grow accustomed to new health standards, Freitas believes those numbers will rebound. Soon, “it won't be a big deal anymore” to seek out nutritious food, he says. “If you compare it to 15 years ago,” agrees Jocks, “when grains were cookies and fruits were cherry pie filling – we've done a complete 180.”