Healthy doughnuts?

Kids like doughnuts.

They also like cheese pizza and Hot Pockets and chocolate chip cookies and string cheese and Goldfish crackers.

School food service directors know this, so that's what the kids get.

If it sounds like a pile of junk food, don't be too quick to judge. Products offered as part of the government-reimbursed school lunch meal must meet nutritional guidelines that dictate that over a weeklong period, the meals must contain no more than 30 percent of calories from fat, no more than 10 percent of that saturated. In addition, the foods must contain one-third of the recommended daily intake for calcium, iron, and vitamins A and D.

"Zero trans fat is not required, but that is very much where the industry is going," says Ruth Jonen, director of food service for High School District 211, and former president of the School Nutrition Association. District 211 serves students in Palatine, Schaumburg, Hoffman Estates, Inverness and parts of Arlington Heights, Elk Grove Village, Hanover Park, Rolling Meadows, Roselle, Streamwood and South Barrington.

She also says there's a movement toward products with reduced sugar and sodium counts.

With those guidelines in mind, food manufacturers are creating foods for the subsidized school lunch and breakfast programs, as well as the a la carte program, which isn't overseen or reimbursed by the government.

On the menu

Among the items that could be showing up in school lunchrooms across the suburbs include:

•Super Chocolate Donut fortified with protein as well as vitamins and minerals

•Tyson baked chicken nuggets with taco-flavored whole-grain coating

•Powersnacks Sweet Trail Mix with carrot chips

•Hot Pockets cheeseburger-flavored stuffed sandwiches with zero trans fat

•Whitney's Yo on the Go Smoothies with no preservatives and 10 vitamins and minerals

•Pancake Pods breakfast sandwiches stuffed with real fruit

•Simplot potatoes fried in trans-fat-free oil

•Readi-Bake reduced sugar, whole-grain cookies

•Goldfish PhysEdibles crackers made with whole grains and zero grams trans fat

•FizzEd. lightly carbonated juice blends with 70 percent juice

•Big Daddy's harvest whole-grain pizza with low-fat cheese and turkey pepperoni

The selection reflects children's eating habits and their brand awareness. A recent study showed that as early as pre-school children equate brand (in this case McDonald's) with better quality.

"Kids are so sophisticated, you can't put corned beef hash in front of them," says Jim Fauth with Schwan Food Company. The national company supplies Big Daddy pizza to schools around the country and has the Red Baron and Tony's grocery store brands. "Their parents take them out to good restaurants; they're introduced to Asian restaurants, Mexican restaurants."

Many food companies, Nestle, Campbell's, Pepperidge Farms and Kellogg's among them, manufacture products similar to their popular retail brands that have been specially formulated to meet the school nutrition standards. So the Hot Pocket or Tyson Chicken Nugget your child is eating at school is actually more healthful than what you find at the grocery store.

"Companies are listening to school food service directors that we need products that have great flavor and are kid-friendly," Jonen says.

Nutrition debate

Yet the growing number of fortified food available has some people concerned that we're not sending the right message to children.

"Adding a supplement to a 'junk food' is blurring the line between what's whole, real food and what's processed food," says registered dietitian Christine Palumbo, a Naperville mom who raised three children.

She says instead of offering the pump-up, processed foods, school administrators "should be teaching children to select and enjoy foods in as natural a state as possible."

District 211's Jonen says she struggles with that dilemma. With the Super Donut, a product that was offered as a test product during the summer school session, for example, Jonen says: "It's a trade-off. You have to give the kids something for breakfast with a good nutrition profile, that's relatively inexpensive and easy to serve. Yet do you send the message that doughnuts are good for you? Is it more important to eat something before you start school?"

"Go with whole foods would be our mantra here," says Paula De Lucca, food service director for the Archdiocese of Chicago's Food Service. The operation provides meals for some 350 schools (some part of the archdiocese, some not) and health care facilities in Lake and Cook counties.

"School food service is evolving," De Lucca says. She says the government program started to combat childhood malnutrition grew into moms working in a school kitchen, transitioned into a period of branded products (Pizza Hut, Burger King) and is now getting back to basics.

She says she's working more from-scratch and fresh produce items onto the menu. The archdiocese food service, for example, makes its own hummus and added black bean salad and black beans and rice to the menu.

She says the service also offers a Farmers Market program to its clients that provides fresh fruits and whole-grain bakery items that can be offered a la carte.

"It's our preference to serve less-processed items as much as we can," De Lucca says. "I think school food service is in the position to improve choices for students."

Jonen, too, says adding fresh fruits and vegetables seems to be an industrywide trend. More companies are offering wrapped, individual portions of carrots, grapes, orange slices and pineapple, for example, making it easier for kids to consume.

"We've found kids are more apt to take canned fruit than a fresh apple, if you can believe that," Jonen says. "You have to make it easy for them to eat."