Food & Nutrition Services (OCPS FNS) is hosting the Fourth Annual Student Food Tasting Show on Tuesday, March 23, 2010 from 10 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. at the First Baptist Church of Orlando (3000 S. John Young Parkway, Orlando) in Faith Hall. New this year, OCPS FNS has invited other school districts to have their students participate in the food show. The show will have the largest number of student participants ever with more than 300 students from elementary and secondary grades. Eighty-five percent of the district’s new menu items for the upcoming year are identified at the food show. Media members are welcome to attend.
Special guests and health and nutrition advocates, Orlando Magic Ambassadors Nick Anderson and Bo Outlaw will attend the show from 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Nick and Bo will join the students in tasting and judging. They will also share their advice on maintaining health and the importance of eating breakfast. In addition, school board members, Chief Operating Officer Michael Eugene and area superintendents will attend the food show.
“We couldn’t be more excited to share our food show with other school districts that can benefit from the valuable information gathered and apply it to their school menus for the upcoming school year. Having the Orlando Magic’s Nick Anderson and Bo Outlaw at the show interacting with students and sharing their nutritional message is an impactful bonus,” said Lora Gilbert, Director of Food and Nutrition Services for OCPS.
The goal of Food & Nutrition Services is for all students to eat the nutritional menu items offered while mirroring what is offered in the retail environment. The food show offers students an opportunity to taste and vote for menu items that they would not regularly see in a school cafeteria.
More than 140 menu items will be showcased by 25 vendors. The items must be cost- effective, user-friendly and meet the guidelines for school nutrition. Featured items include: Yogusto (a Latin dairy product), new sandwich wraps, assorted flavorful sauces, Asian dishes, deli-roasted potato and assorted vegetarian products. Food items presented must be whole grain, low-fat, have no-trans fats, contain low sodium levels and/or have less than 10 grams of sugar per serving. Student recommendations will be applied to the 2010/2011 school menu.
Each year OCPS FNS serves more than 26 million meals and snacks for the nation’s tenth-largest school district. This equals approximately 145,000 meals per day or one million meals every seven days. The department brings in more than $45 million in federal money to the school district. Food & Nutrition Services has won the USDA “Best Practice” award for increasing student meal participation by 40%, Peta2 for being one of the top five school districts in the country to offer vegetarian options and the “Public Health Hero” award from the Orange County Public Health Department for eliminating products containing trans-fat.
The food show was VERY fun! I was one of the people chosen to go. We got some tee-shirts with smiley faces on it and it said, ‘ I am what I ate!’. There was 146 diffrent food choices of sushi, rice, chicken, bread, drinks, ice cream, slushies, dressings, chips, and many other wonderful choices. I couldn’t eat it all because there was alot of food, we got back to school and it was lunch time ( Trust me, we weren’t hungry) we were allowed to get free food and some did but I wasnt hungry.
Nick Anderson (Magic basketball player) and Bo Outlaw (Another Magic basketball player) were there and I got a picture with Nick. Bo is really tall, they are both really cool! There was a raffle ticket drawing at the end of the food tasting session and they handed out soccer balls, basket balls, tee-shirts, bags, and alot of other sweet things. My favorite meal was probably the cotton candy icees! They were suberb, I also enjoyed the quesadillas! Those were amazing, I got like 4!