Park City School District sets sights on eliminating over a dozen unhealthy ingredients

By Amanda McCorquodale

Park City, Utah, known as the home of the Sundance Film Festival and world-famous ski resorts, is also a health-conscious community with a robust restaurant culture. Now, thanks to a local nonprofit and a generous allotment from the school board, Park City students will be enjoying healthier, tastier food enjoyed elsewhere in the resort city.

“When I came on board with the district in 2014, EATS Park City, a nonprofit focused on improving nutrition in schools, approached me with their mission,” said Elizabeth Strasser, the district’s director of child nutrition services. “We looked at what other districts were doing and came up with a plan that made sense for us.”

The district and EATS created 15 to Clean, an initiative to provide more nutritious food to students by eliminating 15 unhealthy ingredients over three years. “We want students to get the most nutrient-dense meals possible,” Strasser says. “We not only want to serve meals that fuel them all day, but we want them to learn eating habits that will continue after they leave our schools.”

Last spring, the school board proved it was just as committed to students’ nutrition when it allotted an additional $190,000 to update the meal program in its 11 schools where an average of 1,800 students were served daily last year.

The initiative kicked off at the start of this school year with a commitment to eliminating the first five of the 15: trans fat, high-fructose corn syrup, monosodium glutamate (MSG), sucralose and sulfites. “Most of our food was already free from these first five,” says Strasser, so it was a smart way to roll out smoothly and also to raise awareness of what we’ve already done.”

Strasser says some of the a la carte menu items like pudding cups had to be phased out and replaced with dessert options like fruit cups, whole-grain cookies, and locally made blueberry and chocolate chip muffins.

To further revamp their menu, the district is hosting twice monthly Adventure Bites, in which students participate in taste tests of new menu options. For the first one, Park City’s world-famous Deer Valley Resort contributed its recipe for zucchini lasagna. “It was very well received by the students with 86.5 percent saying they’d eat it for school lunch,” Strasser says.

“Once the lasagna is on the menu, we’ll invite parents to come and celebrate the healthy and delicious food with their kids at school,” says Molly Miller, the district’s community relations specialist. “We realize that our job is to not only appeal to the students but also to the parents. We want them to recognize the name of these restaurants and say, ‘Hey, I’ve eaten there and it’s great. I want my kids to eat that.’”

If the lasagna doesn’t end up selling well, Strasser won’t hesitate to take it off the menu and try something else. Future Adventure Bites will be a mix of entrees like turkey tacos and chili con carne as well as sides such as avocado salsa and various dressings from recipes from the kitchens of Park City’s top restaurants.

The program also includes a move toward scratch cooking and offering salad bars. Photo: Park City School District

In addition to moving more toward scratch cooking and local produce, the 15 to Clean initiative also meant new salad bars for the district schools. “Our managers were very hesitant about salad bars because they were worried about waste,” Strasser says. “It’s worked because we’ve started slow. We started with carrots, broccoli and cucumbers, so kids can get used to the idea before we add more adventurous options like kale chips, quinoa and lentils.”

For the remaining ingredients to be eliminated as part of 15 to Clean, Strasser says they have been looking into getting rid of saccharine, aspartame, artificial color and flavor, bleached flour, growth hormones and antibiotics over the next two years. “As a small district, we need the bigger districts to really push manufacturers in that direction before cleaner products are more readily availability. That way it’s not such an uphill battle for us, or too costly, or force us to increase meal prices.”

Even in the early stages, the initiative has been a resounding success. “I knew Park City was a health-conscious community, but I was still surprised by the enthusiasm from the parents. I’ve never seen so much interest in a program,” Miller says. “The heart of 15 to Clean is to improve students’ learning and education, so everyone is definitely on board with it.”