Food Service:
Feeding Students from K to 12
What's for lunch?
That's a question school kids ask every day. In
the Twin Falls School District, 70 food service personnel, under the direction of
supervisor Susan Henderson, contribute to the answer.
With over a 1,000,000 meals
being served every year, the kitchens in our district are bustling places, filled with the
aroma of home cookin'. Federally subsidized food service must follow
government-prescribed guidelines in the preparation of these meals. All meals meet at
least 1/3 of the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA's) for calories, protein, vitamins A
& C, calcium and iron--for different age and grade groups. In addition, our meals have
reduced sodium and cholesterol and increased dietary fiber. With meals that contain no
more than 30% of the calories from fat, and no more than 10% of the calories coming from
saturated fat, food is served that is not just "good for you", but food that
kids like and will eat.
So, what's on the menu? Chicken nuggets, tacos, deli sandwiches, spaghetti, burritos,
sloppy joes, or hamburgers, in combination with salads, fruits, desert, and a drink are
just a sample of what is available to kids today. Food
service even offers the most popular food with kids these days: Ham & Cheese and Pepperoni
pizza pockets.
Breakfast
at School
On any school day in the district, you will also
find food service staff serving breakfast free of charge
to all students. And ... it's not just cereal anymore. Breakfast
might be pancakes or waffles with sausage, fruit, and milk. It might be a
breakfast combo bar with potato wedges, fruit juice, and milk. You might get
scrambled eggs and bacon, or quesadillas and potato rounds. Or you might
have cereal with toast, cereal with cinnamon rolls, cereal with donuts, or
cereal with bagels and cream cheese. But no matter what
breakfast is served, it is always served with milk and fruit and
it meets recommended dietary guidelines.
Free and Reduced Cost Meals
As you can see, both breakfast and lunch provide kids with healthy, tasty choices. This
means that each of the 7,000 students can eat a
nutritious breakfast or lunch at school. It means that every day, in every kitchen, someone cooks, washes dishes, and cleans up the
mess. It means that here, someone who might have gone hungry won't. And it means that if
you can't be there to feed your kids, someone will. Isn't that nice?
If you would like information about the
free breakfast program or the Free and Reduced meal program, please
contact School Food Service at 733-0134. If you need
information about the times that breakfasts are served at the schools,
please contact the school your child attends.