Pat Bauer, a cook at Newberg High School, stands before a horde of hungry teenagers and lays down the new law to 15-year-old Jesse Stephenson. 
   “You need some fruit or I can’t give you a lunch.”
   At the front of the lunch line, Stephenson just wants to grab a slice of pizza and go. He protests briefly, then grabs a cup of honeydew melon slices.
   This is what the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 looks like at ground zero.
   The federal law went into effect last week with the start of the new school year. Among other things, it changes nutrition requirements with an eye toward healthier foods and smaller servings. It sets maximum calorie amounts, where there were previously only minimums. It also increases reimbursement rates for schools that comply.
   In a country where the rates of diabetes, obesity and healthcare costs are all increasing, these might seem like good ideas. After the law’s passage two years ago, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack proudly proclaimed the Obama administration had made it a goal to end childhood obesity within a generation.
   But the law’s success depends on human behavior, from the food-service staff scrambling to change menus and tactics, down to students like Stephenson, who said he probably would not eat the melon slices he was forced to pick up because “They always taste like crap.”
   And that’s not even counting the Newberg high schoolers who opt to buy their lunch at nearby fast-food restaurants.
   The first challenge for the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids law is getting schools to follow it. At a national convention in July, school nutrition professionals around the country were panicking about the required changes, said Cheri Meeker, nutrition services supervisor for the Newberg School District.
   Meeker herself “got a little whiny thinking of all the work it would take to do it,” but then had a change of heart. For one thing, she realized Oregon — and Newberg in particular — are on the leading edge of the healthy-food movement.
   “We haven’t had fried foods in Newberg for eight years,” said Meeker, who joined the district three years ago. Even fries aren’t fried, but baked, as are tater tots.
   Newberg easily met the new law’s requirement for at least half of bread servings to be 50-percent whole grain, having already switched to whole-wheat buns and bread and pizza crusts.
   This year, Meeker added whole grains to the chicken-nugget crusts so she’ll be ready when the requirement rises to 100 percent next year. “We might as well let the kids get used to the taste.”
Another relatively easy switch was from iceberg lettuce to a romaine/spinach mix, which provides more vitamins.
   The trickiest change for Meeker has been the serving amounts. She had to remove peanut butter, cheese and cottage cheese from her salad bars in order not to exceed the required daily protein servings. She had to cut macaroni salad, granola, rolls, pretzels, tortilla chips and make the pizza slices a little smaller to keep from exceeding her bread servings.
   Meeker said she doesn’t think he law’s designers were worried specifically about too much starch or too much protein. “I think it’s just too much food in general. The one thing we don’t have any maximums on are fruits and vegetables.”
   In order for the schools to get the increased lunch-reimbursement rate, students must take a half-cup serving of vegetables or fruit or juice. But just because they put it on their tray doesn’t mean they’ll eat it.
   In Stephenson’s case, the problem wasn’t honeydew itself, which he likes when it’s ripe. The problem was that he usually finds store-bought or school-offered melons hard and flavorless.
Meeker agreed that it’s difficult to get consistently ripe produce. “It’s kind of a crapshoot,” she said.
   Across the high school cafeteria, freshman James Anderson ate only one square of the cantaloupe he’d been forced to take, but claimed he’d have eaten more if he had a fork.
   Senior Taylor Kreider ate the sub sandwich but threw away the salad it came with. Not that he doesn’t like salad — Kreider often eats a chicken Caesar salad for lunch.
   But this particular salad had “the weird little spinach leaves I don’t like as much,” he said, referring to the healthiest part of it.
   At the elementary level, schools use additional tactics to get children to eat healthy foods, Meeker said. Teachers and lunch staff encourage them as they fill their trays. Salad bars are cleverly arranged and sit at the front of the line, where hungry children might be more enticed.
   At Mabel Rush Elementary School last Wednesday, 9-year-old Kaitlyn Smith said she didn’t take vegetables only because the ranch dip was missing that day.
   That didn’t stop her friend, Sydney Marsh, whose tray held celery, tomatoes and carrots. Sydney likes vegetables, but knows many of her classmates don’t. “Some people say vegetables are gross…”
“… because they’re healthy for you,” Kaitlyn finished.
   On the other side of the lunchroom, 4th-grader Kyle Bitterman proved Kaitlyn right when he said he doesn’t like vegetables “because they’re good for you,” indicating some children have learned to associate healthy foods with bad taste. One exception, Kyle pointed out, was the tomato sauce on his pizza.
   His friend, Damian Coriel, said he doesn’t like vegetables either, but more importantly, “It takes too long (to eat them) and then you miss recess.”
  Mabel Rush Kitchen Manager DeeAnne Foertsch said Damian’s complaint is common, which is why she’s hoping recess can be rescheduled. A lot of calorie-burning play time before lunch might also make students hungrier and more likely to eat vegetables and fruit.
   Foertsch thinks students will get used to the menu changes. She remembers the switch to whole-wheat buns. The kids thought the buns were burned because they were brown, she said. “They’d say ‘What’s wrong with these?’
   But just a couple of weeks, and it was the norm.”

By Jill Smith, Newberg Graphic