Students help decide new school menu
When planning a menu for a school cafeteria, who better to ask for suggestions than the students themselves? Hickory Creek Elementary cafeteria manager Melissa Livesay couldn’t think of any better group so she created the school’s Nutrition Advisory Council.
In addition to advising Livesay and her staff on menu matters, the students making up the Nutrition Advisory Council, or NAC, learn the benefits of good nutrition and the role the food service department plays in a healthy lifestyle.
The NAC program is a national program sponsored by the American School Food Service Association and boasts 60,000 members. The local NAC, started by Livesay in November, is made up of 19 fourth- and fifth-grade students chosen by their teachers.
Livesay believes Hickory Creek’s NAC is beneficial to both the cafeteria staff and the students. “It provides us with feedback from our customers, the students, and it makes them feel important to be part of the planning. They really like to help,” she said.
For their big project of the year, NAC members last week put on a play for their peers emphasizing the importance of healthy eating.
Entitled “5 a Day Live,” the play, featuring NAC members dressed as fruits and vegetables, told students why it is important to eat five servings of fruit and vegetables a day. The “5 a Day” theme was presented in conjunction with the school system’s Coordinated School Health Program, of which Hickory Creek is a pilot site.
Future NAC projects being considered, Livesay said, include members reading books and stories about good nutrition to the school’s kindergartners.
School system school nutrition supervisor Jean Wix said she is pleased with NAC thus far. “Things are going very well,” she said. “If their success continues we may look at implementing the idea at other schools in the years to come.”