Nutrition Students Cook Up Real Change

Bastyr volunteers develop healthy recipes for Seattle Public Schools' menus

Bastyr nutrition student Carol White used to wonder why public schools seem to have such a tough time stuffing menus with healthy options students actually want to eat. Not anymore.

White, in her second year in the Master of Science in Nutrition program, was among six Bastyr nutrition students who recently volunteered to develop healthy side dishes for Seattle Public Schools lunch menus.

"I went into the whole experience thinking, ‘we're going to change the school district,'" she says. "But I realized I had no idea how hard it is to put these menus together. It really does come down to the limitations the schools must work with."

Child eating peas

Cynthia Lair, certified health and nutrition counselor, Bastyr University adjunct faculty member and member of the nutrition advisory committee for the Seattle Public Schools lunch program, enlisted the student volunteers. The group was tasked with a project similar to one a school dietitian might take on: develop four brown-rice recipes that can be prepared without a stove, cost less than 13 cents per serving, use readily available ingredients, meet the nutritional requirements of the schools and, most importantly, are agreeable to the fickle palates of school children.

After nine months of field research, development and recipe testing in Bastyr's state-of-the-art nutrition kitchen, the group unveiled four dishes that were "met with great enthusiasm" by Seattle schools kitchen staff, Lair says. Of the four, the "Coconut Rice with Cilantro and Lime" and the "Asian Style Fried Rice" recipes were added to school menus for spring quarter.

White, along with fellow student volunteers Theresa Bliffert, Anna MacNak, Renee Paden, Cheryl Decker and Adair Lindsay, will apply the time spent on the project toward the community service requirement (100 hours) of their master's degree program. More importantly, they will apply the experience to their future careers.

"Everything we had to do for the project was something we might do as RDs (registered dietitians)," says Lindsay, who is interested in a career in health-care policy making. "We had to be creative in how we kept costs down and the dishes healthy and appetizing."