Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., tries some peach crunch with vanilla drizzle served by students from Wichita, Kan., at the Cooking Up Change National Healthy Cooking Contest luncheon last week on Capitol Hill. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)

Students from eight public school systems around the country who have won the Cooking Up Change National Healthy Cooking Contest came to the Capitol last week to prove to the Senate that they could prepare healthy — and tasty — meals within a school lunch budget.

“This is all part of working together,” Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said as she gave a “shout out” to the teams from Orlando, Houston, Wichita, Memphis, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis and Washington.

Stabenow also defended the 2010 Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, and said that the half-cup fruit and vegetable requirement for each school meal must be maintained when Congress reauthorizes the child nutrition programs.

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., were among the other senators and staff who attended the lunchtime event on Wednesday in the Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building.

“We want people to know about his competition,” Heitkamp said in explaining why she attended the event.

The School Nutrition Association, which represents school food service directors and the companies that make school foods, has asked Congress to roll back some of the requirements, but Heitkamp said that while some people say “we can’t do it, I find it interesting these kids can do it.”

“We’ve got to be bending the curve,” she added.

School food service directors have asked that plans to be reduce salt further should be put on hold, but Heitkamp said school meals are “a chance to refine the palate and get used to seasonings other than salt.”

About complaints from the food service directors and some students, Heitkamp said, “We have just not had enough time.”

The one problem Heitkamp said she has with the rules is that serving sizes are the same for all students. A 100-pound cheerleader does not require the same amount of food as a football player, she noted.

But in general, she said, she supports the healthier meal rules because there have been estimates that as much as 70 percent of U.S. health costs go to treat preventable diseases.

Mark Bishop of the Healthy School Campaign takes some salad on a reusable plastic tray. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)

The Cooking Up Change National Healthy Cooking Contest is run by the Healthy Schools Campaign, an 8-year-old Chicago-based independent not-for-profit organization.

Cooking for Change is only one of a number of programs the Healthy School Campaign runs, but they are all focus on improving eating, exercise, health and the environment in which students study including the air, explained Mark Bishop, the vice president for policy.

The Cooking for Change contest started in Chicago, but has spread to 10 cities, said Bishop.

For the Capitol Hill luncheon, Cooking for Change brought green divided plastic trays from Chicago. Plastic trays improve the meal experience for students, Bishop said, because they are closer to the dishes used in homes or restaurants.

Plastic foam trays are the norm in school lunch rooms, he noted, although environmentalists object to them, because many schools cannot afford trays or stainless steel cutlery that must be washed.

Another group, the Urban School Food Alliance, made up of the New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, and Dallas school districts, is trying to use its joint purchasing power to buy better trays, Bishop noted.

The Urban School Food Alliance website says that the group shares the goals of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, and that its schools want to leverage their purchasing power “to continue to drive quality up and costs down while incorporating sound environmental practices.”

Together the six school districts have 4,536 schools with 2.85 million students enrolled.

• Healthy Schools Campaign — Cooking up Change
• Urban School Food Alliance

Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., talks with prize-winning students from Chicago. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)


Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., poses with Detroit students who were served Tutti Fruity Parfait. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)


Joel Leftwich, the Senate Agriculture Committee staff director under Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., visits with a culinary teacher and students from Wichita. (Jerry Hagstrom/The Hagstrom Report)