He has the power to declare every lunch period a “pizza day” and he might even know the ingredients in the mythical school cafeteria dish known as “tuna surprise.” He is Eric Goldstein, CEO of the Board of Education’s Office of Food & Bussing. And he can assure New Yorkers that the days of the tuna surprise served in public schools are as long gone as the days of championship NBA basketball at the Garden. He also knows better than to pull the trigger on a permanent “pizza day” especially in New York where the kids, like their parents, would spend the entire day arguing over which place serves the best slice.
Improving school food quality no longer seems like a pie-in-the-sky ideal given President Obama’s emphasis on boosting child nutrition programs. His 2010 budget proposal calls for an extra $1 billion in spending for nutrition programs, including school food.
New York Family Sports interrupted Goldstein’s lunch hour in his Long Island City office for a phone interview just a few weeks before the city’s schools—and their cafeterias—cast open their doors to welcome the largest public school student body in the United States.
The New York schools, according to your website, serve 119 million lunches per year. What is having that responsibility like?
Well it is a very serious responsibility that we as an organization take very seriously. We serve—per day when you count in lunches, breakfasts and snacks—about 840,000 meals every day during the 10-month school year. And we’re focused really on two things: one, getting kids into our program and eating with us, and two, feeding them really good, quality meals. And over the last five years we’ve worked really hard as an organization to try to make that happen. We have roughly about 73 percent of our kids in what they call free/reduced, so for many, many of our kids what they eat at the school will be the most important meal of the day certainly in terms of nutritional content. And we one to make sure that it is appetizing and looks good and they’ll want to eat it, and also we want to make sure that it is nutritionally really competitive. We’ve been able to do that, and I’m really proud about that.
Since you started at this position five years ago, have you seen a change in the priorities in terms of food buying and menu selections?
Oh absolutely. Everything has been changed. For instance, we have an executive chef and he has a team of chefs who work on recipes for us and train our cooks out there in our 1,400 location to make sure we cook vegetables in a certain way and follow the recipes and that sort of thing. In terms of administration there’s been tremendous change and support—some little things that still go a long way. We’ve even changed the uniforms. We’ve moved away from the institutional white uniform that had sort of a hospital feel to it toward more of a restaurant kind of a look, sort of a crimson or maroon top with slacks or a skirt that are beige. We’re trying to create more of a restaurant feel in each of our cafeterias.
It seemed like old school “cafeteria” look stuck around a long time since the 1950s. Why do you think it took so long to get to this point where you made these changes?
I think a lot of the credit has to go to the Mayor and the Chancellor. The changes really resulted as an outcropping of the Children First initiative and radically rethinking the school system and all that touches it. We subverted a pyramid where children and food were at the bottom of that pyramid, and we flipped it back up to the top. We came in and said “Hey, we are a food organization. We’ve really got to think about food,” and that has been a major philosophical change.
Food trends in the press have seen “organic” and “locally grown” and “free range” become standard terms now. Do you encounter those types of things in your buying negotiations or purchasing for the school system?
Yes, we do. We try to accommodate that as best we can, but we’ve got to be realistic with money. Just like in real life, organic foods and healthier foods cost more, and we’ve committed to that as a city. But what is going on in the background, which is critically important to this, is the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act which is what the Feds, through the USDA, give to school districts for reimbursement for breakfasts and lunch and meals essentially. What we’ve been doing is lobbying along with Chicago and L.A. and all these other cities to try to get more money for healthier food and acknowledge that very point, which is that healthier food costs more.
Are you seeing more support on the federal level now with the new administration?
No doubt. I don’t know where it is going to end up with the reauthorization. I think this fall or next spring it winds its way through Congress. We’ve got great political support from Senator Gillibrand, council speaker Quinn and of course Mayor Bloomberg. We’ve been blessed in that sense in that the political leadership really believes in what we are doing.
It seems like there are adults out there who are very vocal about school food quality. I’d bet you don’t have a problem getting feedback from parents?
No, that is not a problem.
And you have heard from activist Ann Cooper?
Ann Cooper is a superstar in this field. We’ve dealt with her before and we continue to do so. Our program, I’ve got to say, I honestly believe that when you look at any district of size, that our program is just really a showcase. But it also comes down to money, which is my earlier point of why we are trying to get more reimbursement money from the Feds.
In terms of home life for students, are there any home eating habits that make your job more difficult as far as getting kids to eat healthy?
Yes there are. Obesity is a big problem in this country and of course in this city. The problem is at home people are used to drinking sodas and other high-caloric beverages and eating in fast-food restaurants. In a way, from a kid’s perspective we compete with that, but for us the trick is to get food that the kids find interesting and appetizing but also make sure it is nutritionally really sound. For example, we only do whole wheat now. We moved to whole wheat hamburger buns. One way we did it was initially we had the top part of the bun as white and the bottom as whole wheat. We did that for a while to get kids used to it. Then we transitioned to whole wheat on top and whole wheat on the bottom.
What is the healthiest menu item you serve?
I don’t know if you saw the other day in the Times was a great picture of our food, which was typical—we got the low-fat milk, we got broccoli, we had this really beautiful rice medley with two little chicken drumsticks that were braised along with an orange. It was a full complete meal, completely healthy and delicious—I can personally attest to that. We also do a lot of salad bars. We had them in high schools and now we are rolling them out to elementary schools. That is something we don’t get reimbursed for from the federal government—we do it anyway, but one of our claims is that we should get reimbursed for that. You want the financial incentive to have districts like ours go the healthier route.
Are there equipment challenges at the schools? Are you able to outfit the kitchens properly?
There are always challenges. I mean, we’ve got a big system. The stimulus package was really helpful for us in buying some equipment. With that we bought the salad bars for elementary schools which are different from the typical salad bar because they have to be smaller so the kids obviously can get to them. There are some challenges—we’ve taken out the frying machines because we don’t fry anymore—all of our potatoes and French Fries are baked, so they have that crispiness so the kids like it, but they are baked, not fried.
The city has identified several nutritional enemies of late. First it was trans fats, now it is high fructose corn syrup. Any new enemies? What is the next thing you’d like to get rid of?
We’re working on sodium. It is trickier, and that is sort of next in the target area. We are constantly reformulating our menu items, like with our cheeses, we worked with the company Land O’ Lakes asking them to take out the sodium in the American cheese. We’re constantly working with the vendor community to get us where we need to go. It is important to know that our program philosophically we don’t look at it from a nutrient-based point of view, we look at it as food. We have a program we run in-house, we don’t outsource it, and that is a big differentiator for us.
On a personal level, and as a New Yorker, do you have a favorite restaurant in the city?
I really like Per Se, but I have to admit I don’t go there too often.
That takes a lot of lunch money.
I have to wait until my rich uncle comes into town.
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Go to www.opt-osfns.org/osfns
jameslee
