How do you find out if students like will eat food items that meet new federal guidelines for whole grains, sugar and salt? You ask them to taste test them!<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s just what Mt. Pleasant ISD did this past week when MPISD Food Service set up tasting stations on most of its campuses. Students got to taste bites of a chocolate muffin, banana bread, a brownie, a pull-apart with cheese spicy and not-so-spicy, pizza, a pretzel, and a food bar called Strawberry Delight.<\/p>\n
Students in elementary schools were asked to rate the food \u2013 using smiley or frowning faces \u2013 on how it looked, smelled, tasted and made them feel. Older students just indicated if they liked the food item or not. MPISD will use the results when selecting food products to add to the school breakfast and lunch menus next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat thirty, forty or fifty-year-old women think tastes great differs greatly from what 9, 10 or 11 year old children think tastes great,\u201d explained Laura Stewart, MPISD\u2019s Food Service Director.\u00a0 \u201cWhile the cafeteria managers and I have the responsibility to decide what we will purchase next year, we want\u00a0 items that our students will be excited about seeing on their breakfast and lunch menus .\u00a0 The only way to do that is to let them taste available products and ask them to give us their opinion on them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The results of the taste tests vary by campus, noted Dr. Judi Saxton, MPISD\u2019s Director of Communication.\u00a0 \u201cWhile the pretzels were very popular at Mount Pleasant High School, the students at Annie Sims Elementary this morning didn\u2019t like them very much. The Sims students really didn\u2019t like the spicy pull-aparts. You could tell by the looks on their faces as they tasted them. It will be interesting to see how the high school students like them \u2013 they seem to like the cafeteria\u2019s spicier offerings now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MPISD cafeteria managers also like the idea of the food taste testing. \u201cThis is a fun way for the kids to have a say in what we serve in the cafeteria,\u201d said Vivian Fowler cafeteria manager Alicia Smith.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got some quotes from some 5th Grade students at Wallace Middle School,\u201d Saxton added. \u201cI\u2019ll let them speak for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeremiah Jenkins: \u201cI tried everything! There were a lot of choices. My favorite was the chocolate muffin. I think they should absolutely add it to the cafeteria menu!\u201d<\/p>\n
Andrew Avila: \u201cThe food was very tasty. I\u2019ve never tasted anything quite the little cheese strips! I think it\u2019s really cool we could vote for our favorites!\u201d<\/p>\n
Eli Rider: \u201cI like the food. The desserts were a little unbalanced; some were super sweet and some weren\u2019t. Overall, it was really good!\u201d<\/p>\n
Reese Ball: \u201cI tried almost everything! My favorite was the strawberry delight. If they add that to the menu, I would definitely not bring my lunch as much!\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Picture – Wallace 5th<\/sup> graders Eli Rider and Jake Henley select the items to taste-test<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How do you find out if students like will eat food items that meet new federal guidelines for whole grains, sugar and salt? You ask them to taste test them! And that\u2019s just what Mt. Pleasant ISD did this past week when MPISD Food Service set up tasting stations on most of its campuses. Students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/wallace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/wallace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/wallace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/wallace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/wallace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/wallace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/wallace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/wallace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/wallace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mpisd.net\/wallace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}