Longmont Latinx parent group advocates for healthier school lunches

Dec. 5—A Longmont Latinx parent group is looking to involve more St. Vrain Valley families in their campaign to advocate for healthier school lunches.

ELPASO (Engaged Latino Parents Advancing Student Outcomes) Voz Longmont, which includes about 18 parents, is a grassroots leadership group that started working on the school lunch issue more than a year ago.

They researched the food served, looked at options in other districts that cook more of their food from scratch and talked to district leaders, from the food services director to the superintendent to school board members. The group now is sharing a petition on social media to increase involvement from parents outside the group, as well as reaching out to local farms.

"We would like to see something different, more fresh food, more food cooked in the schools," said Caro Neri, ELPASO Voz Longmont's community organizer. "We've been trying to understand more things and give them solutions. We really believe kids need to be fed with healthy food."

St. Vrain Valley spokeswoman Kerri McDermid said all 1,595,000 meals the Nutrition Services team has served so far this school year have met or exceeded the U.S. Department of Agriculture standards. Local produce, including organic produce from Colorado's Western Slope, also is incorporated whenever available, she said.

"St. Vrain has a strong focus on nutrition and has received many recognitions, such as the USDA's Once in a Melon Award for administering an exemplary farm-to-school program," she said in a written statement.

But ELPASO members say they want more fresh-cooked options, with higher nutritional value. Neri said the group started by looking at the ingredients and nutritional information for two to three months' worth of school meals, finding many additives common to processed foods and too much sodium.

"The more processed the food is, the more risk for the people who are eating it," she said. "Kids are developing obesity and high cholesterol."

They visited the programs in both the Boulder Valley School District, which recently built a culinary center to prepare school meals, and Denver Public Schools, which cooks about half of what they serve from scratch, to get ideas.

One challenge, Neri said, is district schools mainly have warming kitchens with ovens to heat up food, but not the equipment to prepare it from scratch. Another is the lack of a trained chef in the food services department.

She said the district has made small changes since the group started advocating for healthier, such as switching condiments, but is still offering essentially the same meals.

"We know it's more than just the taste or, 'My kids don't like this,'" she said. "Some moms are working in the kitchens, some were volunteers before the pandemic, so they know what kind of food they are serving. We want to convince them that change is necessary. They need to change the whole system."

Susana Barrios, who has children at Indian Peaks Elementary and Sunset Middle schools, said she became interested in what's being served in school lunches years ago when her oldest would come home from school without eating lunch.

He didn't like the food, she said, saying he didn't like the taste, the options or that food was served cold that should be hot. Her sons also both experienced health issues that could be related to diet, with her oldest's doctor recommending a change that prompted her to start packing his lunches.

"I immediately agreed to be part of (the ELPASO) project because, like me, there are countless families with these health problems based on school food," she said via email, adding she wants to see both healthier food and longer lunches.

Karla Cardoza, who has children at Rocky Mountain Elementary and Trail Ridge Middle, said she considers the school lunch options "unhealthy and highly processed."

"Most of the time parents do not ask what the school food contains," she said via email. "When we started our research with ELPASO Voz Longmont, I learned about the ingredients and the type of food that is given in schools."

She said her children sometimes come home with headaches from not eating enough or with stomachaches.

"My wish is that they will switch to healthier and fresher food, food from scratch and prepared in a school kitchen," she said. "And that they gave enough time for the children to learn to enjoy food."