Commodities and school lunch: a winning combination; food from USDA helps schools keep prices low and quality high

Food and Nutrition, April, 1987 by Kent Taylor

Before the district began using acommercial vendor, Pratt used to be a consignee for commodities, which meant she had to notify other school districts when a shipment of commodities was coming in.

"I never had a real holiday since Ihad to be ready at any time to meet a railcar or truckload of commodities and oversee the distribution for hundreds of other schools,' she says.

"Many times I stood out in ice orsnow waiting for school districts to pick up their share of the foods. Needless to say, when we decided to go to commercial distributors to handle the commodities, I was ecstatic!'

Pratt now uses a statewide contractwith a commercial food vendor to store and distribute commodities to each of her 18 schools. Under the contract, the commercial warehouse stores each commodity shipment up to 60 days without any additional costs.

"One of the nice things about thevendor system,' says Pratt, "is that you are not required to take everything at one time. You can get your commodities and commercial foods delivered when you need them. This really helps since storage space is at a premium in the school kitchens.'

Donna Pratt has been school fooddirector for Florence County District One for 10 years. She still recalls her first year when the state education office asked how many commodity mixed vegetables she could use.

"Thinking we would get several shipments,I asked for 1,000 cases for the year. You can imagine my surprise when all of the cases came in at one time. We ate a lot of mixed vegetables, but we didn't waste any! I learned quickly to ask only for amounts of commodities that we could comfortably store,' Pratt laughs.

Foods used in imaginative ways

More than 10,000 students eat lunchin Florence schools each day. Forty-five percent of them receive lunches free or pay a reduced price, slightly less than the national average of 49 percent.

"Commodities are the salvation forschools that serve a low percentage of free and reduced-price lunches,' Pratt says. "Since these schools don't receive as much federal reimbursement as schools serving high numbers of free and reduced-price meals, they depend on commodities to supplement their commercial purchases and keep costs down.'

Pratt's lunch managers use a dailycontrol sheet that evaluates each food item, including commodities. "We have found the commodities to be excellent in quality,' says Pratt. "There is no difference from commercial foods. The variety of commodity products is also very good, which helps us provide more choices in our menus.'

Florence schools use the commodityground beef often for a number of different entrees--spaghetti with meat sauce, meat loaf, pizza, chili, beef-and-macaroni casserole, and the always popular hamburger. Commodity canned meats are also used in a variety of ways to lower meal costs.

"We save money by mixing in halfcanned pork with our barbecue, and the kids love it. Many of our lunch managers use the commodity tuna with lettuce, egg, cheese, and tomato in a salad plate each day,' Pratt says.