Over the next month, myself and 3 others (only one other and I assess a school at a time) will be doing a foodservice assessment of 7 schools who have been identified to be most likely to benefit from some one-on-one attention. We will be using a tool I developed with the help of the Public Health Nutritionists and will be focusing on areas such as food safety, compliance to the NS School Food and Nutrition Policy, and how much time is required by the foodservice worker to successfully prepare the food.
Today myself and my preceptor observed the breakfast and lunch programs in a local elementary school, and it went beautifully. The foodservice worker was an absolute delight and was extremely helpful. She admitted to being stressed about the idea of us coming in to do the assessment today as she had initially perceived our choosing her school to visit as a negative. However, she said after a few days she rethought it and instead decided to make it a positive situation and use the opportunity to ask us questions about the School Food and Nutrition Policy (SFNP) and her menu.
How did the assessment go?
Very well!
We were able to see that food safety was a priority to the foodservice (FS) worker through her actions, signage, and method of food holding and storage. We were able to answer her questions regarding the menu and she requested some healthy (and enticing) recipes to serve the students for dessert. We highlighted a few areas that will need to be improved, such as no longer serving chocolate cookies or pudding (as chocolate is not permitted by the policy), reducing the quantity of moderate snacks being offered for sale for recess snack, and removing a non-baked nacho chip from the menu. Otherwise, the meals are largely made from scratch by the FS worker (students purchasing meals vary from 30-70 students daily depending largely on when payday is for the parents versus what is being served). These freshly made items include: homemade soups, salads, sandwiches and wraps. Other items include mostly from scratch components, such as pizza where the FS worker purchases a frozen whole wheat pizza crust but then prepares the rest herself. I think she is doing an excellent job and shows a great interest in ensuring that she is complying with the policy and providing the students healthy meals, while trying to keep costs down. We identified some supports that we could offer the FS worker including the aforementioned resource of healthy/yummy dessert recipes for kids that follow the policy.
I hope the other FS assessments go this smoothly. Next FS assessment is next Monday.
I am curious - why do you indicate this assessment went very well, and the other assessment not so well? I would hazard a guess that you would learn more from the assessment where the school had not moved as far in adopting the policy (see my other post). What are your assumptions of success related to this process?
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