UPDATED: Superintendent Responds to Student Letter Letter Asking For Nutritional Info. in School Cafeteria

Bernards Township schools superintendent Valerie Goger responded to a residents' question regarding the issue below. Goger granted permission for Patch to add her response to students' request for access to nutritional information on foods served at school cafeterias.

"I spoke with our ARAMARK Food Service Director Deb Smith." Goger wrote in her response.  "No students have approached her with this request as of today. However, ARAMARK is currently in the process of developing new software that will supply nutritional information on all food served in the cafeteria. Ms. Smith hopes to have our own district's information entered into the program over the summer. The software is a 'nutritional calculator' which parents or students can access online to find nutritional information on meals and ala carte items.  The high school administration is wholly supporting this initiative.  Valerie A. Goger, Superintendent of Schools

The following letter was submitted by a member of the Ridge Health Club at Ridge High School.

For years, the idea of eating healthily and fulfilling the required portions of every food group has dominated health classes throughout the school district. However, while preaching for a healthier lifestyle, it seems the administration has failed to institute the tools necessary for kids to abide by the cardinal rules of healthy eating that they have been taught. This problem most evidently presents itself through the lack of nutritional information that is provided for the different foods sold in the cafeteria.

Liz Pires and Emily Sisto, juniors at Ridge and founders of the Ridge Health Club, had club members write letters to the administration and to Aramark concerning the release of this pivotal information.  According to the 2009 New Jersey Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 10% of high school students are obese. Currently Ridge High School has about 400 students in each of the four grades, bringing the total number of students to 1,600. This technically means there is room for at least 160 obese young adults, and the problem is only exacerbated by the lack of information available.

Kathleen Pallotta, junior at Ridge, explains the rationale behind the club’s initiatives by explaining that a number of students “are careful about what they eat, making school lunch an impossible option. And because nobody knows what’s in the food they’re buying, other students are discouraged from caring at all.”

Day after day, hundreds of students line up in the Ridge cafeteria to purchase a lunch that is not all that cheap, and yet, they do it without knowing the ingredients, caloric content, or anything else. Thus, there remains a population who continues to brown bag their lunch every day in order to avoid the unknown calorie risks. Among them, Sisto boasts proudly “I have never purchased food from the school cafeteria ONCE since kindergarten. The reason: I have no idea what is in it.”

Nicole Gaziano, also from Ridge, reiterates Sisto’s feelings by explaining that after being recently diagnosed with Lyme disease, she had to stop buying lunch at schools because she “cannot find the sugar content of any of the food items served by Aramark in the cafeteria.” Even though some of the food items may be suitable for her condition, she is unable to make this distinction.

This problem is not only limited to Ms. Gaziano, but plagues the minds of many other students. From allergies to diabetes to any other condition or disease out there, students many times have to carefully monitor what they eat so as to avoid becoming ill. On a more regular basis, the many varsity athletes are forced to create a diet in order to maximize their strength and stamina for games and practices later on. Many times the lack of information can tempt them off of their strict diets, or completely prevent them from knowing whether or not they were ingesting the proper amount of calories.

It seems that while the wave of healthy eating has swept through the nation, Basking Ridge has lagged far behind by refusing to showcase the nutritional information of the food served in the high school cafeteria, even though Aramark has no problem with it being disclosed. The Club has made multiple efforts to reach out to the Ridge administration about the insufficient — nonexistent—amount of information available in the cafeteria. It’s one thing to sell unhealthy food, but it is completely inexcusable to not provide nutritional information. The Club is urging parents and students to communicate with the school.

Nicole Castillo, Ridge High School student

Ridge Health Club