Snacks get a healthy makeover

RONAN— “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” has taken on a whole new meaning at a couple of local elementary schools. K. William Harvey in Ronan and Pablo Elementary are both in the first year of a new snack program, courtesy of a $40,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture.

“The kids are always excited because they like snacks,” said Marsha Wartick, the food service supervisor for School District No. 30. “Some they like more than others.”

Each day at the two schools, all the students and teachers receive a small fruit or vegetable snack in the afternoon. Apples, oranges, celery, cauliflower and mushrooms have taken turns as the many different fruits and vegetables consumed by students in the first months of the program.

The purpose of the program, officially named the Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Program, is to give kids a healthy snack that could impact their diets and introduce them to different, exotic foods they may not have a chance to try otherwise. Kiwi, pomegranate and radishes are a few of the fruits and vegetables children will be exposed to this year, Wartick hopes, giving children a chance to taste foods they’ve never tried or seen before.

“It’s been a trial and error with what works and what doesn’t,” kindergarten teacher Frank Such a said. “I think it’s a great program.”

The program came to fruition when a representative from the Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI) in Helena contacted Wartick and informed her the two schools were eligible for the grant. To receive the grant, it must be an elementary school with at least 70 percent of the students enrolled receiving free or reduced meals. The $40,000 was part of almost $800,000 allocated to the state of Montana to run the program, which has been installed at 70 schools across the state. The program is in its second year, and seems destined to expand with the strong results state officials have seen.

“We can teach children about a wide variety of fruits and vegetables they might enjoy,” OPI superintendent Denise Juneau said in a press release. “The hope is that children will continue to make fruits and vegetables a part of their eating habits.”

Part of the struggle for Wartick has been figuring out how to order for close to 800 students between the two elementary schools and 36 total classes. Depending on what is served, Wartick needs to order more or less of the food. And what the snack is depends a lot on how much the kids eat. Kindergarten teacher Crystal Cornwell has found the kids react differently to the variety of snacks.

“The teachers love it and it gives kids exposure to healthy snacks,” Cornwell said. “I handed out crackers when we had radishes, and we want to have the kids try at least a bite. It’s a fun way to experiment with food, and we couldn’t do it without the program.”

The program doesn’t just provide a healthy snack for the children.

Cornwell and the other teachers have incorporated games and teaching lessons into snack time. Cornwell has her kindergartners sound out the words, guess if it’s a fruit or vegetable, work on descriptive words for the snack and even incorporates technology, searching for the fruit on the Internet and showing the kids how it is grown and other fun facts.

The safety of the food served is another important factor. Wartick said she had to dump an order of snow peas after they came in rotten, part of the travails of serving never-frozen, fresh produce.

“That’s one of the challenges is ordering that much of one food at one time,” Wartick said.

In the classrooms, teachers and students alike are extra careful when serving. Cornwell gives the children lots of big responsibilities, like sanitizing the tables and kids’ hands before serving the snack. She wears gloves, and uses the hygienic aspect of serving food as a teaching tool as well.

“I put them in charge for a lot of the preparation,” Cornwell said. “Especially with the flu going around we need to be extra careful.”

Cornwell said she hasn’t heard feedback, positive or negative, from parents, but what she has head from the students and fellow teachers, it’s clear the initiative is a hit.

“We love the snack program,” she said.