A Home-Grown Meal for Des Moines Students
Students across Des Moines today enjoyed a lunch featuring Iowa grown or raised chicken, apples, bread and milk.
What Napoleon said about his army, that it marched on its stomach, is equally true of the biggest school district in Iowa, and on Thursday, DMPS four-star General/Executive Chef Chad Taylor joined with his counterparts in large urban districts around the region to feed the hungry troops a uniquely Midwestern menu.
The third annual Midwest Menu Day was also served at public schools in Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha and Detroit, almost half a million students altogether.
The food service directors, staff, and community partners of the Focus Midwest Learning Lab have been working together since 2012 to collectively leverage their purchasing power to improve the quality of food served to public school students. The Learning Lab is a project of School Food Focus, a national non-profit organization which supports school districts in moving toward school meals featuring healthier regional menus.
In the case of DMPS that means sweet corn and apple crisp from Iowa Choice Harvest, sweet potato “golden rolls” (made with regionally sourced butternut squash and sweet potato) and chicken drumsticks from Preferred Meals, washed down with cold milk from longtime local moo juicer, AE Dairy.
Chef Taylor showed up at Weeks Middle School to observe the steady parade, or thundering herd, of satisfied customers on Thursday. Like stamps of approval, stickers reading “sweet corn rules” were being passed out to diners by someone most accurately identified as The Big Apple. On their way out to the playground after lunch students had the opportunity to stop and pose in a photo board that illustrated the axiom that “you are what you eat.”
Taylor said that DMPS increasingly incorporates produce from local vendors like Marshalltown-based Iowa Choice Harvest year round, not just on Midwest Menu Day.
“Iowa Choice products are grown by Iowa family farmers and flash frozen, the next best thing to fresh,” he said. “Besides corn and apples, we are using aronia berries and a sweeter hybrid carrot from them this year.”
In the past there might have been an issue with finding local or regional suppliers capable of meeting the demand of a cafeteria chain that feeds 20,000 patrons per day. But Iowa Choice Harvest can meet that challenge, giving the district a reliable partner in providing not only tasty but nutritious meals to fuel the high-energy learning process.
Who knows what the rations of Napoleon and his soldiers were. Maybe if they’d had more apples, corn, sweet potatoes and pasteurized low-fat milk he’d never have met his Waterloo.
