by Frank Lee
operations@thenewsleaders.com
Parents of Kennedy Community School students can now learn more about the nutritional value of the meals offered with a new digital online menu that provides nutrition facts.
The St. Cloud Area School District 742 has launched Nutrislice for its schools, which is intended “to help boost you and your student’s nutrition IQ.” You can view your school’s digital menu on the district’s website by clicking on “Breakfast & Lunch Menus” or by downloading the free app.
“So if you click on Kennedy, it will show you the menus specific for our school – breakfast and lunch,” Principal Laurie Putnam said about Nutrislice, which is new for the 2016-17 school year. “And then there’s also a language interpreter, like a translator button that people can press if they would like to read it in Spanish. We don’t have it up in Somali yet.”
Classes resume at Kennedy Community School Sept. 7. The St. Joseph-based school is part of the St. Cloud Area School District and serves students in preschool and grades K-8.
“Breakfast is fairly standard,” Putnam said. “We’ll serve a fresh fruit and a drink and cereal, so parents, if they want to see what the fruit or the cereal is, they can.”
Putnam said she likes how Nutrislice provides nutritional information about the lunch menu at District 742 schools.
“You can click on ‘lunch,’ and you click on, say, ‘September’ when school has started,” Putnam said. “And then parents can see what each of our menus are for the day.”
Nutrislice has the following disclaimer on its website: “Every effort is made to serve food items as listed. However, challenges in delivery or availability of specific food items may cause changes without notice.”
“Each item on the menu has a hyperlink, so as soon as you wave your cursor over it, it pops up a picture of the item and then the nutritional information,” Putnam said. “It will tell you the calories, fat, cholesterol, carbs, so for families who have something they are particularly avoiding can get some additional information . . . or show special diet info, like allergens.”
Putnam said the other feature of Nutrislice she believes is “kind of cool” is families can also rate the menu items.
“Say the Asian orange chicken we know is always popular because we have our own lunch count,” she said. “But then families can also go in and give it five stars or four stars.”
Kennedy Community School has 840 students. Putnam said roughly about half of the student enrollment on any given day eats a hot lunch at the school.
“On popular days, like hotdog days or the Asian orange chicken days, it could be as close as three-quarters,” she said. “All of our kindergarteners have access to a free breakfast. For breakfast, the number is a lot lower. It’s probably about a third of our students (who) will have breakfast.”
Putnam said the school is committed to health and wellness, like the other schools in the St. Cloud Area School District.
“We are looking to be a lot healthier about our fundraisers,” she said. “Our schools do walk-a-thons and in particular we just got rid of our fundraisers that were offering unhealthy items.”
There is also a free Nutrislice app for Android and iPhone users, which, for example, stores the last three school menus an app user has viewed, so the person doesn’t have to search repeatedly.
“Our families and our school staff are demanding more healthy options,” Putnam said. “And our district is also leading the way as well as being responsive to First Lady Michelle Obama’s advocacy for eating healthier as children. Certainly the rise of diabetes in youth is an issue.”
For more information about Nutrislice and school menus in the St. Cloud Area School District 742, visit http://stcloud742.schoolwires.net/domain/80.
Laurie Putnam
