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For many Americans, the elementary school cafeteria is the source of some of their earliest food memories. Bring up school lunch on Oahu and people grow rapturous about brownies and beans with franks. And there was the smell–that slightly sweet aroma of baking buns and simmering industrial-size pots of food made with things that came out of cans. The smell of warmth.

Last week, after a 36-year hiatus, I had the opportunity to eat in the Manoa Elementary cafeteria. I walked into the dining hall and felt relief–it smelled exactly the same. I closed my eyes and gratefully breathed in, resuscitating memories in my mind. The Natatorium may become just a black-and-white photograph in an “old Hawaii” coffee table book, but eau de cafeteria remains intact.

I watched kindergartners and first graders stand in line to receive their daily bread and noticed the two biggest changes–the compartmented melamine trays have been replaced with paper plates and coin purses have been replaced with scannable badges.

Gayle Uyema, the school’s food services manager for 20 years, said that paper plates and plastic utensils were introduced in 1998, when the dishwasher started breaking down. As for payment, having to pay 25 cents for lunch–and five cents for milk–was my first lesson in financial responsibility. It was part of the lunch ritual, fumbling with your oval rubber disk with the slit in the middle–squeezing it to reveal the quarter and nickel. The shiny coins that made scary bedtime stories like The Little Match Girl just that much more real. Today, instead of handing over a crumpled dollar bill and quarter, kids stand at the cashier table and raise their heads as the monitor reaches out with the scan gun. That first humble money transaction is now laser magic.

It was the third Thursday of the month, which meant the menu was cheese pizza, tossed greens, apple sauce and Jell-O. And I was looking forward to it with every molecule of my once sixth-grade self. My first slices were from this very cafeteria–and the food counter at the long-gone Woolworths in Ala Moana Center. I would grow up to learn that those were loose interpretations of pizza–yes, they involved dough and some form of tomato sauce–but I still have a fondness for the memory of them. I thought I would never taste them again.

Gayle said that the cafeteria does not follow the same recipes that were used in 1973, but the puffy square of pizza she served me was remarkably similar to what I remembered. The soft, bready crust is spread with a thick, sweet tomato sauce then topped with a thick layer of melted cheese. I sat across from three excruciatingly cute four-year-old boys, who were shy for about three seconds. I asked about their favorite lunches. They all said “Pizza!” “Not hot dogs?” I asked (served on fourth Mondays with baked beans or potato rounds). “Oh, yeah, I like hot dogs the best,” said one of them. Then he divulged very personal details about his father for the rest of lunch.

The one notable difference was in the light brown dough–which is made in-house. Gayle now makes the buns and pizza crust with 50 percent whole wheat. “My kids are still getting used to it.” (The school’s rice is 50 percent brown rice, and Gayle stays away from trans fats.) And even then, studies show that to have nutritional benefit, breads must be made with 100 percent whole grain wheat.

Last year, Gayle also added soft shell tacos (fourth Wednesdays) to the menu. She noticed that a lot of students are still adjusting to them as well. “They just look at it. They’re used to the hard shells.”

If it seems the school cafeteria has been slow to change over three decades, however, it sounds like Manoa households are even slower–if kids are thrown off by partially whole wheat buns and unfried tortillas, that means the majority of parents still use nutrition-free white bread, and buy taco shells that come in a box.

And yet, in 1940, a local superintendent’s report stated that “Cafeterias have made brown rice popular in place of white and have served an adequate supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, all of which should have an important effect on the health and eating habits of our young generation,” according to documents on the history of Hawaii’s school lunch program that Gayle gave me.

Sometime over the last several decades, school food got less healthy, and is now heading back to fresh. Food Services does what it can with the resources it gets. The school menu includes this appeal: “In the past, we’ve asked for your help during the month of September so that we can keep our staff. We know these are tough times and would really appreciate your help by encouraging your child to purchase a nutritious breakfast and lunch on happy face days.” (Eleven squares on the calendar include a smiley face.)

Gayle knows the caloric and nutritional amounts of every single thing that’s served in her cafeteria. She explained that they use federal recipes that are lower in salt and fat than they were in my day. “They’re not as good as the old ones,” she laughed. The schools also use more fresh, seasonal produce, and salads now contain more Romaine lettuce, which is more nutritional than, say, iceberg lettuce. These days children get more fresh fruit, instead of the syrupy canned stuff I had as a child (though that is still on the menu too). “We’re giving out bananas this year and kids love it,” she says.

Aside from soft tacos, other items new to the menu, which is devised by a menu-planning committee, are chicken strips with teri sauce (chicken McNuggets didn’t enter the American dining landscape until 1983), burritos and creole macaroni. But the rest is largely stuck in amber. I wish I could go back every day for a month, to time-taste-test beef stew, Salisbury steak with gravy, oven-baked chicken, and corn dog.

I introduce myself to one of the “grandmother volunteers” and find out she attended Manoa Elementary. “Did you know Melvin Chiya,” she asks. “He’s my uncle.” He was my classmate. We were the first graduating class from this district. Manoa is the Mayberry RFD of Oahu. And I feel comfortingly at home in this circle of valley life.

Hope I can go back on Nov. 16. That’s when they next serve my favorite from lunch past–baked spaghetti, with Romaine won bok salad, peaches and French bread. Molto Mario who?

Note: School cafeterias are not open to the public. I am grateful to Principal Jeanette Uyeda, Vice-Principal Kerry Higa and Food Services Manager Gayle Uyema for making this visit possible.

Getting healthier
food into Hawaii schools

The past few decades have not been kind to school lunches–compared to the 1950s, today’s children eat vastly more processed and prepared food, and consume much more sugar. Ah, progress.

The clock, however, may be starting to turn back. Though there is some controversy about unintended consequences, a recent rule change to the way the Department of Education procures food for public school cafeterias creates a preference for local farmers. Act 175 involves a buffer of up to 15 percent when local agriculture producers bid for state food contracts–for example, if an out-of-state producer offers to sell lettuce to the state at $1 per pound and a local grower comes in with a bid of $1.14, the contract would go to the local farmer.

Consider it a small step forward. School lunch advocates say that despite increasing focus on the quality and nature of the food our children are eating, significant barriers remain.

“The biggest challenge right now is financial,” says Dexter Kishida school food coordinator at the Kokua Hawaii Foundation. He points out that even at the price of $2.10 per lunch, which goes into effect next year, Hawaii school lunches will still be among the least expensive in the United States. While that may appear to be good news in a state where nearly 40 percent of students receive discounted or free school lunches due to financial need, the Department of Education’s most recent accounting pegs the state’s costs at $4.21 per lunch. “Even with federal reimbursement, the new prices doesn’t cover the full cost of making the lunch,” Kishida says, “so the state has to subsidize it.” In a fraught budgetary environment, that puts a lot of pressure on officials making purchasing decisions, who can usually find processed and imported foods at prices lower than local producers can compete with. “So it’s hard to go to school food services and say, ‘let’s spend even more money’ to get local produce into the lunch program, Kishida says. “[School food managers] are doing the best they can with the resources they have.”

While Kishida and others are pushing for a $1 increase in the federal school lunch subsidy, Kokua Hawaii Foundation is working to help fill the gap with its AINA In Schools program. The non-profit group currently supports pilot programs in 10 Oahu schools that are going beyond the introduction of healthy snacks to create an integrated food curriculum for grades K–6. Components include garden-based learning, nutrition lessons, agricultural literacy programs and even waste management lessons, in which all grades help manage the waste produced in cafeterias and school yards.

“We train parents within the schools and volunteers to do a once a month nutrition lessons,” says Kelly Perry, volunteer and outreach coordinator for the program. “All of it is hands-on and standards based.” School gardening programs and student-and-parent-run farmers markets produce enough funds to allow students to offer healthy snacks in the cafeteria, and the AINA In Schools program is aiming for a holistic change in the relationship between children and the food they eat, including field trips to farms and classroom visits by agricultural producers.

Perry says that in order to grow beyond the 10 schools it now serves, AINA In Schools needs community support. “We need to become a resource and train trainers–retired people, graduate students, parents, everyone– to do the lessons in the schools.”

Back to the future?

1. Chop suey, brown rice, pineapple juice

2. Beef hekka with cabbage, brown rice, bread and butter sandwich, half apple

3. Beef stew with vegetables, mashed potato, sandwich, two dried prunes

4. Spanish hamburger, brown rice, string beans, banana sandwich

5. Hamburger balls, creamed potatoes, Chinese cabbage, dried apricot

6. Baked salmon with peas, buttered spinach, sandwich, piece of chocolate

7. Baked beans, cole slaw, sandwich, fresh pineapple slice

8. Hamburger and liver loaf, mashed potatoes, buttered beets, sandwich

9. Sweetmeat steak, cabbage, brown rice, fruit, jam sandwich

10. Japanese rice with vegetables, bread and butter sandwich, sliced pineapple

–The Oahu School Food Service Association

School Lunch Facts

$2.10

Price of a lunch in Hawaii public schools, effective next school year, up from $1.25 currently. Even at the new level, Hawaii will have one of the most affordable school lunch programs in the United States. The cost of producing one school lunch, according to the most recent Department of Education accounting, is $4.21.

< 30

Percentage of total calories that may be composed of fat, according to U.S. Department of Education rules. Total saturated fat must be less than 10 percent.

8g

Amount of protein contained in one half-pint of Meadow Gold Fat Free Chocolate Milk. According to the U.S. Department of Education, each lunch should contain at least 10g of protein.

664

Minimum daily calories of a school lunch for students in grades K–6, as stipulated by the U.S. Department of Education.

37.9

Percentage of Oahu students who receive partially or fully subsidized school lunch.

The Food Lobby Goes to School

The government gets a ton of pressure from a food and beverage industry frantic to keep kids hooked on a diet of sodas, snacks and hot dogs. The competition, for a piece of this $10 billion market, is particularly fierce.

Oliver!- Food Glorious Food