Every year, Broward County Public Schools strive to improve healthy meals for students.
According to BCPS Food & Nutrition Services Assistant Program Manager, Zoe Crego, school meals in Broward are now healthier than ever.
"We provide the dietary guidelines for Americans. We provide whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as low fat, low salt, low sugar type foods that our children like to eat," said Zoe Crego, Assistant Program Manager, BCPS Food & Nutrition Services.
Children can be picky, especially with healthy foods. That’s why BCPS involves them when it comes to picking menu items.
"Most of our new items come directly from the student food show. Every year, we invite elementary and middle school students to try new menu items and rate them on a tablet. They try it, immediately rate it and then we get to see what they like and what they want to eat on the menu. They look at that tablet and they rate it from awesome to gross. If they rate it gross, that's an item that we're not going to put on the menu. If we get mostly ratings of awesome, that's something that we try out in a couple of schools and you can see on the menu next year," said Crego.
Recently, BCPS held their “Show, Tell and Taste— What’s on the Menu” event, where media and cafeteria managers tried the new items.
"They tried new spins on old classics like our meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, macaroni and cheese in a cornbread bowl, fish sticks. They also tried our new vegetarian and vegan items that we're going to be having like our black bean and green chili burrito, vegan chicken nugget salad, and our no nut butter with yogurt chips. That's another item that we're helping our students to try so that they can have an assortment of foods in their diet," said Crego.
For more information on the new menu items, head to browardschools.com