Tempe School District receives grant to help provide healthy food options
Oct 22, 2018, 6:30 PM | Updated: Oct 23, 2018, 10:30 am
(AP Photo/Andrew Davis, The John Innes Centre, UK)
(AP Photo/Andrew Davis, The John Innes Centre, UK)
PHOENIX — Accelerating the healthy school meal initiative during National School Lunch Week will be in full effect at the Tempe Elementary School District this week.
The district has received a $180,000 grant from the Life Time Foundation to help them reach their stated goal of removing ingredients of concern from all food options provided to students.
Nutrition services supervisor Emma Kintzman said that the grant has helped them move forward with their goal.
“When we heard about the grant we felt like it would work perfectly in line with our mission,” Kintzman said.
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“We’ve used Life Time as a resource for finding where to procure foods from, what other school district nationally are using and how we can really start just to move forward to change and enhance our menu for our students.”
Starting with 62 percent of food items free of ingredients of concern, Tempe has improved to 80 percent.
Vice chair of Life Time foundation Jason Thunstrom was thrilled to work with the district as well.
“Perhaps most notably for everybody, that means that about 12,000 students are consuming 2 million healthier meals,” Thunstrom said.
For National School Lunch Week, Tempe School District is introducing a menu that consists of taco salad, salad bar, bean burrito, turkey sandwich and grab n’ go options.
