Students at Renville County West (RCW) have seen some exciting changes to the school lunch program and classroom snacks. Val Zaske, RCW Food Service Director, has been to several trainings and meetings to learn more about how to improve the nutrition in the school. She has applied for a grant in order to be able to provide more fruits and vegetables to the students.

Zaske has attended a couple of trainings by the University of Minnesota Extension Services called, “Great Trays.” This workshop explores how to offer new fruit and vegetable varieties and flavors through taste testing and simple scratch recipes. Zaske received ideas and skills to bring back to her own school kitchen. Another benefit Zaske received from attending these trainings is a free industrial food processor that makes cutting, dicing, slicing fresh fruits and vegetables a breeze – making it easier and faster to get these foods to the children’s plates.

Another addition to the changes at RCW is the award of a grant called “Fresh Fruits and Veggies”. The purpose of the program is to expand and increase the variety and amount of fruits and vegetables children experience and consume. Combined with nutrition education and a reinforcement of healthful eating habits, the program emphasizes the long-term goals of positively influencing children's life-long eating habits and combating childhood obesity.

Overweight and obesity are among the most urgent health challenges facing the country today. Seventeen percent of children in the U.S. are obese. From 1980 to 2000 obesity rates for children tripled.

A number of changes have led to the obesity epidemic: relative prices of healthful foods have increased faster than prices for less healthful foods, increased portion sizes, increased consumption of processed foods typically high in sodium and increased schools vending and a la carte foods. School breakfast and school lunch program participants obtain about half of their food energy intake for the day from school cafeteria foods.

With the new programs that the RCW Food Service staff will be implementing, students are being offered and have more choices for fruits and vegetables. Thrivent Financial donated insulated totes that are used to deliver fresh fruits and vegetables: carrot sticks, grapes, pears, apples, bananas, plums, oranges, peaches, broccoli, cauliflower to students in the elementary grades for snack. Salad bar is available to students in grades 4 through 12, Monday through Thursday that offer a variety of salads, fruits and vegetables and have become very popular with the kids.

As Zaske works to implement the Farm to School program at RCW with the help of a grant that Health Educator, Michelle Breidenbach at Renville County Public Health received from RC Hospital Foundation, students will eat more fresh, local foods and learn about where their food comes from, all while supporting local farmers. By connecting farms and schools, children, schools and farmers all benefit. Farm to School programs have been shown to increase the number of fruits and vegetables kids eat by one daily serving. And, they carry these habits home.

Farm to School has three components, often referred to as the three C’s: cafeteria, curriculum and community. All three of these components can be met with the help of school staff, community members and volunteers that are interested in helping RCW become a healthy school where choosing from a variety of locally grown fruits and vegetables in the classroom or in the lunchroom are popular.

If you would like to volunteer to help the food service staff and teachers at RCW with these programs or would be willing to learn how you could contribute , please contact Val Zaske at 320-329-8368 or Michelle Breidenbach at 320-523-3784.