(11/27/2024) When it comes to determining which new foods make the cut for school menus, Anoka-Hennepin asks the people with the most important palate: Students.

The Director of Child Nutrition, Noah Atlas, collaborated with Coon Rapids High School Family and Consumer Sciences teacher Aimee Halvorson and approximately 30 students in her Culinary and Nutrition class to sample and provide helpful feedback on food items under consideration for school menus this spring, and next school year.

The taste testing process is an important step in ensuring efficiency. The district currently serves an average of 27,500 lunches per day, and 11,500 breakfasts; so when the district commits to purchasing a meal option - it must purchase thousands of each item for over 40 school sites across the district, and be confident that students will prove it’s an appetizing option.

• Foods sampled included Maple Chicken Sausage and Waffle Egg and Cheese sandwiches as possible new breakfast items.
  
  

• For lunch, students dished their opinions on a new Chicken Caesar Salad, Red Beans and Rice, Chicken Wings, Chicken Tikka Masala, Birria Dip and Barbeque Beef Sandwiches, Turkey Kielbasa, Chicken Gyros and a Caribbean Chicken Bowl.

Student input allows for the most favored items to be piloted at some district schools after the Thanksgiving holiday to see how the options perform on serving lines, and some items may be added to the menu at all schools for the 2025-26 school year.

Of the taste tests performed in November 2024, the most popular were the Chicken Caesar Salad, Maple Chicken Sausage Breakfast Sandwich and Chicken Wings, which will be offered to students in school cafeterias beginning in the spring of 2025. Child nutrition staff must first drum up sides to pair with the chicken wings to meet the nutritional requirements of the National School Lunch Program.

Other menu items that will continue to be piloted in school cafeterias this spring include the Turkey Kielbasa on a Bun and the Chicken Gyro, after staff makes some adjustments to each dish based on feedback from the students.

Atlas confirmed that currently, Orange Chicken is the most popular meal option among Anoka-Hennepin students at all grade levels.

View photos from the taste testing opportunity at Coon Rapids High School.