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<p>DALLAS &#8212; It&#8217;s Stromboli Day and Mary Artsma is heating tray after tray of the stuff she&#8217;s been making for the last two weeks. &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t make 100 of these in one morning,&#8221; she laughs.</p><p>The dough is whole grain &#8212; a stronger taste than teens usually encounter and a chronic sticking point in the push to have healthier student meals &#8212; so it gets an extra robust sauce. It seems to work, Artsma notes. Despite being healthier, the strombolis are among the most popular dishes at Dallas High School.</p><p>Other tricks the contemporary cafeteria has adopted in the last five years?</p><p>Couscous and chickpea salad sporting petite broccoli florets and halved grape tomatoes. &#8220;The kids aren&#8217;t crazy about the chickpeas; you have to hide them,&#8221; Artsma admits, talking about a bowl of carrots and cauliflower coated with rosemary butter. &#8220;I ground the rosemary myself. They won&#8217;t eat vegetables unless I put cheese, bacon or flavored butter on.&#8221;</p><p>Since the passage of the federal &#8220;Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act&#8221; in 2010, the big trick has been figuring out how to get students to eat food prepped within the tougher guidelines. The school cafeteria demanded showmanship as much as chef skills: Bright lights, lower ceilings, attractive displays. Ditch the classic sunken stainless steel bins in straight rows.</p><p>&#8220;It looks better and sells better if we raise it,&#8221; Metz Culinary Management District Manager Chad Rockovits said, pointing to a serving station where Artsma&#8217;s couscous and cauliflower are arrayed in dishes set at different angles &#8212;more home-style buffet than institutional food line.</p><p>Artsma hearkens back to her own teens, remembering a less savory sampling in the high school caf. &#8220;These kids have such developed palates,&#8221; she notes. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t even know what sushi was when I was in school. Now we serve it every Thursday.&#8221;</p><p>And just as vendors and schools seem to have figured out how to make food sell under the new rules, those rules are set to change.</p><p><strong>Mandated healthy</strong></p><p>The 2010 revisions, mandated by a law with the awkward acronym of HHFKA, were touted by proponents as a major step in fighting childhood hunger and obesity. Critics vilified it as gross government overreach increasing cost and waste. With that law up for re-authorization, both sides have been working to influence the rules that will likely replace it.</p><p>The current guidelines are complex. Dallas Food Service Director Diane Ruff makes it sound like solving a Rubik&#8217;s cube. &#8220;You have to offer a red vegetable two days a week. Then you have to offer a green. Then there&#8217;s the &#8216;others,&#8217; like cucumbers.&#8221;</p><p>&#8220;When it first came out, the biggest change was that every student had to have a fruit or vegetable on their tray,&#8221; Rockovits said. &#8220;They had grain, protein, vegetable, fruit and milk, and if the student took three of those, it would be considered a lunch.&#8221;</p><p>The definition of lunch is important in seeking government subsidies. The law made menus more complicated, increasing the cost of running a cafeteria. To help counter that, the law upped the federal subsidy for school lunches, the first non-inflationary increase in more than 30 years.</p><p>The law also let districts with high numbers of low-income students save money by eliminating paperwork and accounting. Districts could agree to give free lunches and breakfasts to <em>all</em> students in exchange for a guaranteed overall subsidy from Washington. No need to track family income or who eats what.</p><p>That works for some area districts, but not for Dallas. So the district still has to keep tabs on how many subsidy-eligible meals it serves, especially when students dine a la carte.</p><p>Other changes include setting specific serving sizes, reducing fat and sodium, and making any bread, pasta or dough whole grain.</p><p>&#8220;That was a huge adjustment,&#8221; Rockovits said. Whole grain dough doesn&#8217;t rise as readily as white dough, and can have an overpowering taste &#8212; so much so that this year the government gave school districts the chance to apply for an exemption from the mandate for products that aren&#8217;t selling in the healthier version. The Dallas pizza being pulled from ovens is made with traditional white flour dough.</p><p>&#8220;I think it&#8217;s just what they are used to,&#8221; Rockovits speculated. &#8220;How many pizzerias sell whole grain pies?&#8221;</p><p>Whole grains add nutrients to the meal, but also add fiber, which can make students feel fuller longer, reducing the urge to snack. The proposed law that would replace HHFKA &#8212; dubbed the &#8220;the Improving Child Nutrition, Integrity and Access Act&#8221; and thus having an equally awkward acronym of ICNIA &#8212; throttles back the amount of whole grain required in school lunches.</p><p><strong>Eat or toss</strong></p><p>Yes, the mandatory healthy servings led to noticeable waste initially. &#8220;We can give them the vegetable, but we can&#8217;t make them eat it,&#8221; Ruff said. &#8220;In the first year, a lot of times it would just get tossed.&#8221;</p><p>The reason may have been more than a matter of taste, especially in high school, Rockovits suggested. &#8220;Kids didn&#8217;t like being told they had to eat a vegetable.&#8221;</p><p>But the vendors providing the raw goods, the cooks in the kitchens and the food service companies trying to make a profit all adapted, Rockovits said, learning to make dishes that appealed to the youngsters while still meeting the nutrition standards.</p><p>The upshot: They don&#8217;t weigh waste or count chucked chickpeas, but Rockovits and Ruff agree the amount of tossed food has gone down. Several studies back up that belief.</p><p>A 2014 Harvard study found students were eating more fruit and vegetables, and that levels of waste weren&#8217;t any higher than before the standards were adopted. In a separate pair of surveys by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the majority of elementary and secondary administrators responded said there was less or about the same waste as before the standards.</p><p>The proposed replacement law, ICNIA, keeps fruit and vegetable rules intact. It also postpones a three-phase reduction in sodium set up under HHFKA by several years &#8212; a move critics object to, noting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 90 percent of children ages 6-18 eat too much sodium, and that one in six has raised blood pressure &#8212; a condition that can be influenced by sodium in the diet.</p><p><strong>Baked, not fried</strong></p><p>There are only about 10 minutes left until students pour through the doors, and staff is rapidly shuffling from kitchen to serving area, moving food from oven to warmers, including non-fried French fries.</p><p>&#8220;They&#8217;re baked,&#8221; Rockovits says. &#8220;We haven&#8217;t had a fryer for four years.&#8221;</p><p>Along with the &#8220;hotline&#8221; featuring those strombolis, students have the options of a salad bar, made-to-order wraps, and &#8220;ice melts.&#8221; &#8220;They took all the cream out of ice cream,&#8221; Rockovits confesses.</p><p>At the sub toasting station, Miriam Velasquez ramps up her prep work, stopping long enough to gloat.</p><p>&#8220;The most popular station, right here!&#8221; she beams.</p><p>A small sign touts the &#8220;Mountaineer Hoagie,&#8221; named after the school mascot. What is it? Velasquez begins to describe it, then decides it would be easier to make one &#8212; two strips of bacon, chicken, a special sauce and shredded mozzarella. She actually does seem to build it faster than anyone could say it.</p><p>&#8220;She was named Mountaineer of the Month,&#8221; Rockovits points out, an honor students doll out to favorite staff.</p><p>&#8220;I was crying,&#8221; Velasquez says with another broad smile. Then, with an almost hushed reverence, adds, &#8220;I got to park in the principal&#8217;s spot for a <em>whole</em> month!&#8221;</p><p>The doors open, the students come in and, true to predictions, two stations draw the biggest crowds &#8212; strombolis and subs.</p><p>Stroll through the common area arranged more like an upscale mall food court than school cafeteria. Spot check what&#8217;s on the plates, and it looks like the healthy options don&#8217;t make it past the cash register quite that frequently. Many have a Mountaineer hoagie, a stromboli, or a burger, not a fruit or vegetable in sight.</p><p>Rockovits concedes this is not uncommon in schools where the percentage of students from low-income families is small. The students here tend to have enough expendable income to afford the a la carte menu and skip the greens, reds and others.</p><p>But that doesn&#8217;t mean HHFKA is a failure. On the contrary, Rockovits says, the fruits and vegetables are well accepted in elementary schools &#8212; which could bode well for future diets. &#8220;By secondary school, their palates are already set.&#8221;</p><p>Even when the teens go for the meat and mozzarella on a bun, they are getting whole grain breads and low-fat, low-sodium everything else.</p><p>And student reviews tend to be favorable.</p><p>&#8220;The Mountaineer is the <em>best</em>!&#8221; Junior Tony Nyzio offers unsolicited. &#8220;You should really try it.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_TTL012316schoollunch2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Chad Rockovitz, district manager for Metz Culinary Management, discusses options for lunches at Dallas High School. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_TTL012316schoollunch2.jpg</photo0><caption0>Chad Rockovitz, district manager for Metz Culinary Management, discusses options for lunches at Dallas High School. </caption0><photoCredit0>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_TTL012316schoollunch3.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Mary Artsma makes strombolis for lunch at Dallas High School. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_TTL012316schoollunch3.jpg</photo1><caption1>Mary Artsma makes strombolis for lunch at Dallas High School. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_TTL012316schoollunch4.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">The cafeteria-style lunch room is full of options. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_TTL012316schoollunch4.jpg</photo2><caption2>The cafeteria-style lunch room is full of options. </caption2><photoCredit2>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_TTL012316schoollunch1.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Miriam Velasquez prepares hot sandwiches for Lucas Hilstolsky and Cody Coolbaugh at Dallas High School. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/web1_TTL012316schoollunch1.jpg</photo3><caption3>Miriam Velasquez prepares hot sandwiches for Lucas Hilstolsky and Cody Coolbaugh at Dallas High School. </caption3><photoCredit3>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit3></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Mark Guydish</p><p>mguydish@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Cafeteria reboot: School lunch morphs to suit sophisticated palates, new laws