CCISD gets student input on cafeteria food selections
Special to Leader-Press
Seven-year-old Sophia Daniels struggled with the chopsticks as she tried to pick up the piece of tangerine chicken. But, she was not giving up. The Martin Walker Elementary second grader skewered the piece of meat with the stick, ultimately bringing it to her mouth and achieving the goal of tasting the Asian cuisine.
Daniels and students at Martin Walker Elementary as well as several other schools throughout the district participated in a cafeteria food taste testing to help determine what foods would be served in the school cafeterias next year. CCISD Director Child Nutrition Melissa Bryan said it is very important that students have an active role in choosing menu items that they have tasted and will actually eat.
“If I have two different choices in chicken, then allowing them to taste each item and then complete a survey on it really gives me a true look into which chicken item they think tastes the best,” Bryan said. “When they are completing the surveys, I ask them to not just tell me that its “tastes bad” but to describe it to me, to use those adjectives on why they think it tastes bad such as too salty, too mushy, doesn’t taste like “real” chicken. This is the feedback that I am looking for when the selection of items for the next school year menu is in the decision mode.”
Students taste tested a variety of Asian cuisine including Japanese Cherry Blossom Chicken, Tangerine Chicken, Thai Sweet Chili Chicken, Teriyaki Chicken and more using chopsticks. To cleanse the palette, the students were offered fortune cookies in between tasting the many different entrees.
“We have had an Asian line at the high school for two years now and these menu choices have been taken down to the junior high last year. So, it was time to bring these items to the elementary schools menu and allow them some different choices,” Bryan said. “You would not believe how many kids stated that they have never tasted Asian food and the opportunity to give them some new taste experiences was so worth it.”
Using descriptive adjectives in their feedback on the entrees, students responded with words like flavorful, sweet, tender, juicy, and delicious. Bryan also taught the students the Japanese words for “yummy” and “yucky” and had them hold up signs written in Japanese to indicate their preferences for each item taste tested.
The final results? The top three items were Teriyaki Chicken, Japanese Cherry Blossom and third was a new pizza called Wild Mike’s Pizza that the students are used to seeing in the grocery stores, Bryan said. Daniel’s favorite choice was the Tangerine Chicken.
CCISD holds taste testings at various schools in the district many times through the school year to ensure it gets a good sampling of ages and grades for feedback on what food is being served. Bryan said parents will be invited to taste testings in the upcoming school year.