23. Revolutionary School Lunches-Lake Travis ISD | Marissa Bell, MPH, RD, LD

Revolutionary School Lunch Program: How One Texas District Transformed Student Nutrition

Lake Travis ISD has served 10,000 extra servings of fruits and vegetables beyond regular meals through unlimited produce offerings, while students run home asking parents for sugar snap peas after taste tests and participate in synchronized carrot crunches. Registered Dietitian Marissa Bell reveals their game-changing strategies: local food hubs delivering farm-fresh ingredients, strategic pricing making healthy choices cheaper than junk food, and hydroponic lettuce growing right next to lunch lines. This episode provides the complete blueprint for transforming any school's food environment and proving that kids will choose healthy foods when you spark curiosity instead of demanding compliance.

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Transcript

Marissa Bell (00:00)
We've also been offering unlimited fruits and vegetables to our students so that students who may not have money in their lunch account can always still fill their bellies and

No matter what the lunch account says, they still can have fruits and vegetables as long as they've purchased a meal with us that day. So that's one way that we're increasing intake of fruits and vegetables and helping students to address their hunger cues with healthy choices.

Jollie (00:20)
I was, meeting with some of the leaders, at this school district last night And I mentioned that to them and their eyes just got so big, like, my gosh, that's fantastic. Like, how are they doing that?

Marissa Bell (00:31)
Yeah, it's a really interesting thing. It's not common. would say we're still trying to figure out how this year we started to try to quantify how much produce was actually walking out the door. Cause you think students will self regulate fruits and vegetables, but we were interested to see that almost 10,000 servings of fruits and vegetables have been served thus far throughout the school year beyond what's being served on the school lunch

Bill Jollie (00:56)
Hey y'all, it's Jollie with Interrupt Hunger's movie Give podcast. I'm here to help you get back to your roots and live like our ancestors did before ultra processed foods poisoned us and before technology trapped us in sedentary isolated lives. I interview experts in exercise, nutrition, and food insecurity. People who've transformed their lives through healthy habits and community health champions building healthier communities, all to discover exactly how they did it and share those strategies with you. Our goal? Take these proven methods back to Boerne

and make it the healthiest small town in Texas. Then share our blueprint to create healthy small towns all across this incredible country. Before we get to today's guests, here's how our Donate Your Weight program helps you celebrate weight loss victories, whether you're going solo or joining a team challenge.

Jollie (03:09)
Hey y'all, it's Jollie with Interrupt Hunger's Move Eat Give podcast. Thanks so much for joining us again. We've got Marissa Bell, registered dietitian with us today. Marissa, thanks a lot for joining us.

Marissa Bell (03:20)
Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Jollie (03:22)
Very good. So let's just tell the folks about you a little bit. So you've got a bachelor's in nutritional science, minor in horticulture for Texas A master's of public health and health promotion education from UT Health Science Center at Houston. And you are, in your own words, you're dedicated to fostering a sustainable food system that promotes healthy lifestyle behaviors, supports local economies, and protects environmental health.

Marissa currently serves as a dietitian and marketing coordinator at Lake Travis Independent School District. And in this role, she oversees meal accommodations for students with special dietary needs, manages marketing promotions, implements farm to school initiatives. We love that. And provides nutrition and education across 11 schools serving over 11,000 students. And you find purpose and initiatives that nourish both kids and communities and also serves on the Austin Travis County.

Food Policy Board, collaborating with community leaders to drive food system change in schools, cafeterias and beyond. I love all that. you handle nutrition at Lake Travis Independent School District. So first of all, why don't you tell us about Lake Travis?

Marissa Bell (04:28)
Yeah, so Lake Travis ISD is a school district in Lakeway, Texas, which is about 30 minutes west of Austin. We have 11 schools. We have seven elementary schools. We have three middle schools and one high school and we're a bit unique because we operate the National School Lunch program and breakfast programs only at our elementary schools. So we do not operate those programs at our middle and high schools.

And typically what that means is that the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs are what allow schools to be able to extend free and reduced price meal benefits for students. And so we though still make sure that we're extending those benefits to students at the middle and high schools. We just subsidize that cost ourselves. So we're not receiving any federal reimbursement at the middle and high school level. Yeah, it's very unique.

Jollie (05:14)
⁓ it is interesting. I haven't heard of another school like that.

Marissa Bell (05:18)
We have about 11,000 students in our school district and about 11 % of our schools. I'm sorry, 11 % of our student population qualifies for free and reduced price meals, so it's a relatively low need area. Pretty high income as in terms of need. And then we also spend about $3 million a year on food for our students, which to me is a really interesting metric because.

You can imagine the impact that that dollar amount can have when you use it wisely and you spend it on certain things to support your community or the environment, for example. So we think about those things when we're spending our dollars and how that can support our broader community and our environment.

Jollie (05:59)
So this is, I'm just kind of shocked that I've never thought to ask other school districts our own here in Boerne like how much we spend on food. That's such an important metric that it just haven't occurred to me yet. So thanks for that. I'll start digging in as I'm talking to people in our own leadership here in Boerne. So that's really interesting. OK, so y'all are in a more affluent.

Marissa Bell (06:20)
Yeah.

Jollie (06:23)
area because in Boerne we're about the same size we're right at 11,000 students as well but we're just under 20 % free and reduced school lunch so so the other reason besides your your credentials and experience I've been following you on LinkedIn for a little bit and you and your team at Lake Travis Independent School District have just done some really really neat stuff and and not just

within the school district, you're on the food policy council as well. So started reaching out to you for just some questions as we're trying to, you know, make our little small town here in Boerne the healthiest small town in Texas. I know we've got some competition, but you, a few months ago, you helped us out a lot and give us some ideas and directions and what we might try to accomplish and some low-hanging fruit and just.

kind of get our gears spinning and put us on the right direction. So thank you so much for that. I really appreciate it. let's start off by saying really your education and your experience. So between gardening, nutrition, and public health, it's just a really good collection of interests that really makes you seem built for a role in school nutrition. So.

Where does love of helping others get healthy come from and like what drives you to come up with all these really creative ideas to help kids?

Marissa Bell (07:43)
Thanks for asking. That's a really great question. I'll say that my journey with farm to school really happened, started in my college years. I went to Texas A as you mentioned, for my bachelor's in nutrition sciences. And Texas A is an agricultural school. So they had a student farm on campus, a sustainable, small organic, one acre student run farm operation. And while I was there studying nutrition, I quickly found my way to that, that

student farm, which is what inspired me to start studying horticulture because I started to learn alongside my classmates about how the health of the soil really influences the health of our foods and the health of our environments. And so I ended up becoming the president of the Sustainable Student Agriculture Student Association there. But I brought this nutrition lens into a world of fruit and veggie producers, horticulture students.

with this nutrition lens, I started forming partnerships with schools and college station and bringing the students from the schools to our, our farm on campus for field trips. And then we would bring the farm to the school and we would talk to them about what fruits and veggies look like, where they grow, how they grow. the benefits of them nutritionally. And I saw that spark of curiosity in a student about fruits and vegetables in a way that, you know, you just don't see the light in their eyes in the same way when you talk, tell them that it's.

good for them or just eat it because it's good for you. They get this curiosity and excitement about it. And so that's really where my love for using gardening and agriculture as a nutrition education tool came from and felt like a very natural fit to go into school nutrition for that reason. And then I also saw the community benefits.

harvesting food alongside my colleagues made me more interested and more excited to eat healthfully myself. so, and then it gave me a sense of place and purpose in my community that you just don't get elsewhere. And so bringing that sense of place to our students, I think is really important to also inspire them to eat and to adapt healthy eater, adopt healthy eating behaviors.

Jollie (09:41)
So we teased on this a little bit that y'all are doing some, some pretty neat, creative, unique things to get kids healthy. And if you just went down a, like a laundry list of ideas, y'all are, y'all have already started tackling a lot of them and you've been there. How long you've been there? Four years, five, five years. Okay. All right. So like, why don't you paint a picture? This is kind of a big question, like paint a picture of what like healthy nutrition looks like it.

Marissa Bell (09:59)
This is my fifth year.

Jollie (10:09)
at Lake Travis.

Marissa Bell (10:10)
Sure. So over the last five years, I'll say that before I was here, we'd been doing farm to school work. I say we. Prior to my time here at Lake Travis ISD, farm to school was happening, but it looked a little bit different. We've always had, I say always, the folks before me had been purchasing local items to serve in our cafeterias and to use them as education tools for our students. But I think what

really changed in the last five years is that we started to really take a systems level thinking approach to how our purchases and our impact can have a greater impact in our community. And that really came along with like the COVID supply chain shortages, I would say. We had a time where we had this really shared experience among community members. Everybody had experienced COVID supply chain shortages and empty grocery store shelves.

And so through that, we've also seen that in our community in Travis County, that less than half of our, I'm sorry, less than 1 % of the food that we eat in Travis County is actually produced locally and that we're losing 17 acres of farmland a day due to development. so this has all kind of come to light in the last five years. And so we started thinking about how we can really use our school public funded dollars to help

solve that problem and bring healthier food to our students. So we've been, over the last five years, forming a lot of community partnerships with mission aligned local nonprofits like the Sustainable Food Center in Austin. We've also partnered with the Central Texas Food Bank and we started going down and having, I'd say we're helping to create a new distribution channel for some of these local farmers to access

institutional markets and to sell into our schools. And so that's one of the things we've been doing this past year is incubating what I'd call a food hub with in partnership with the Central Texas Food Bank. And we can talk more about that, but that's probably one of our biggest things that has evolved over the last five years.

We've also been offering unlimited fruits and vegetables to our students so that students who may not have money in their lunch account can always still fill their bellies and

No matter what the lunch account says, they still can have fruits and vegetables as long as they've purchased a meal with us that day. So that's one way that we're increasing intake of fruits and vegetables and helping students to address their hunger cues with healthy choices.

Jollie (12:32)
I was, meeting with some of the leaders, at this school district last night And I mentioned that to them and their eyes just got so big, like, my gosh, that's fantastic. Like, how are they doing that?

Marissa Bell (12:42)
Yeah, it's a really interesting thing. It's not common. would say we're still trying to figure out how this year we started to try to quantify how much produce was actually walking out the door. Cause you think students will self regulate fruits and vegetables, but we were interested to see that almost 10,000 servings of fruits and vegetables have been served thus far throughout the school year beyond what's being served on the school lunch

tray. on the

Like one hand, mean, my gosh, how many servings of fruits and vegetables are students getting that may not otherwise. And those are fruit and veggie servings that those students are by choice taking and they're coming back for, which is really fascinating.

Jollie (13:20)
And so this program, they pick out their lunch, they pay for it, and then they get the unlimited fruits and vegetables. So like 10,000 servings above what their meal is. That's incredible.

Marissa Bell (13:28)
Yes.

Yes. Yes. It's really exciting. Yeah. then, ⁓ right. Exactly. It's exciting. I mean, when you give them autonomy and choice and, yeah, it's the often it's a student coming back for maybe they want to buy a snack or a bag of chips and they may not have the money in their lunch account. And we are able to say, Hey, little Johnny, you may not have what you need to purchase this today, but would you like an extra fruit or vegetable?

Jollie (13:34)
Yo, go figure. Kids like fruits and vegetables.

Marissa Bell (13:54)
And so oftentimes that's the conversation and they can say no, but they often say yes.

Jollie (13:58)
Are they encouraged? Do school staff like encourage them instead of getting snacks? Are they able to do that? Like kind of direct them to this, you know, what do you call it? The unlimited fruits and vegetables? What do you call that? Okay.

Marissa Bell (14:08)
⁓

Yeah, yeah, we do advertise that they can. They have to take at least one fruit or vegetable to make a complete meal to get charged the meal price, but we do advertise that it is an initiative of ours that they can select more than just the one they can, you know, keep stacking them up. Yeah, it's often a verbal prompt, especially with our young students when we just say hey.

Jollie (14:25)
circle.

Marissa Bell (14:31)
Would you like to have a fruit or vegetable instead if they don't have a, yeah, money in the lunch account for something else.

Jollie (14:35)
⁓ that's wonderful. How easy. Yeah.

So why don't you dive into the food hub? Because I've only recently learned about that.

Marissa Bell (14:43)
Yeah, sure thing. about two years ago, we received some grant funds called Local Food for Schools Grant. You may be familiar where pretty much local food purchasing incentives from that came down from the federal government. It was allocated to the states. And so through our state, we were able to opt in for those funds. We received about 90, $99,000 to spend on minimally processed locally produced foods.

And so a group of us in central Texas, a group of schools in central Texas have been convening for the last couple of years to kind of strategize around, you know, getting more local food in schools and what the barriers are to doing so. And some of those were what I mentioned earlier about the fact that we're losing farmland, losing farmland and cost of land is increasing. Doesn't seem to be within the scope of our control, but it's definitely something to consider when we're purchasing local food.

but we also had distribution challenges. And so we learned that, we all had this collective experience where we're able to get Texas grown produce from maybe larger farms down in the Rio Grande Valley, or maybe in the panhandle or further outside of Travis County city limits or county limits. But, we're really missing the farmers down the road. And so if we're losing farmland and we can't support the farmers down the road, what can we do about that?

Um, and we were trying to get the product to our door. And so these small, small farmers down the road, they don't necessarily have the capacity to bring the food to all 11 of our kitchen delivery sites. So at Lake Travis, we don't have a central delivery location where we can receive a delivery and redistribute ourselves. So it was important for us to try to get that product to all of our doors. And so, um, we have been partnering with the central Texas food bank.

to really be the logistics and distribution solution for that problem. So they've been, it's been on their radar to try to address and solve some upstream barriers to food access. And so when we can invest in a regional food economy that helps to make sure that all people have equitable access to fresh products. so...

they have the logistics and the distribution infrastructure to be able to help solve that problem. And so we've been trying to put our heads together over the last year and figure out, can we partner and figure out how to make this work?

Jollie (16:59)
I love this is such a beautiful example and the more examples I hear the more it reinforces. Several nonprofit leaders have told me like don't try to reinvent the wheel. Figure out other organizations.

that are going in the same direction as you and see how you can work together. And like that is such a beautiful example of what y'all are doing there. It's not just one school district, you're conversation with other school districts and you don't have a central kitchen, which most don't. And so you're like, you've got this money, you have an idea.

And y'all figured out a way just by partnering, collaboration and strengthening relationships. And that's just fantastic.

Marissa Bell (17:40)
Thanks. And I'll say as well that, you know, a lot of our farmers in Travis County are, are working on small acreage. so one farmer may not be able to supply enough product for even a single school district, much less multiple. And so one thing we've been able to do through the central Texas food banks partnership is to aggregate supply to meet institutional demand. And so we've been able to figure out how many, for example, we focused on carrots as our pilot product.

to do this, but we were able to figure out how much carrots school district A, B, and C would need throughout the year and how often. And they were able to go partner with farmers and figure out who would be willing to grow that, those carrots in that amount. And we're able to supply the institutional volume that was needed that maybe just one farmer couldn't.

Jollie (18:26)
there's been any new expansion of any new farms started or expansion of farms because of this because I've got some I got a couple friends that are into farming up in Dallas and they're just doing like the neatest stuff like collaborating and trying to you know figure out ways to to get food into to food deserts and just like collaborating

like and adding partners all the time, whether it's public, private or shipping produce from South Dallas up to North Dallas and, you know, getting fresh produce for fruit deserts down in South Dallas. And that's just, the simplicity of this model is, I mean, it's just, anybody can do it in any location around the country. And it just, benefits the kids.

you're getting fresh produce locally grown and so the transportation issues are minimum they don't have to go like days or a week and a half since you know produce has been picked i mean it's just that's pretty darn close to just in time but then also you're helping the local agricultural economy which is just fantastic i love this yeah this is neat stuff ⁓

Marissa Bell (19:28)
It

seems like it would be scalable. So part of the idea is that if we can figure out how to prove this model with a food bank, there's a whole food bank network, not only statewide, but nationwide. And so could that be replicated? Sometimes food hubs are incubated in food banks, but it would be really neat to see this idea spread statewide to the distribution network of all food banks in Texas.

Jollie (19:51)
So my next episode is going to drop Clancy Harrison with Food Dignity up in Pennsylvania. She's doing this for food banks and she's found a local farmer that's aggregating produce that would either have to be thrown away by these farms or given away.

Either way, they're losing money. And so this way, she's like buying it. You know, they're able to grow their business. They're able to count on, you know, how much she's going to buy and then filter that out to the, you know, I don't know how many nonprofits and food pantries she works with, but it's the same premise. It's, this is a great model. I love this. All right. So a lot of school districts,

Let's just assume somebody's starting from scratch. maybe they have their own staff doing it. Maybe they have a vendor, but some number of folks within the community want to start improving the health and creating a healthier environment for our students in the community around there. you're going to get a lot of pushback in the beginning because it's something new. So like what kind of

Like what kind of obstacles have y'all faced or maybe things were trending in the right direction when you first got there, but I'm sure y'all have faced some obstacles. Is there anything that stands out and maybe share how y'all are able to navigate some of these big obstacles that have popped up?

Marissa Bell (21:13)
Sure thing. I think one of the biggest obstacles is just gaining buy-in for the higher cost products, for example. So we had to really shift our mentality from like a bottom line mentality to more of a best value mentality. so knowing that bottom line is very important for running a successful food service operation. But thinking about where are these

Are we able to use these higher costs, maybe local produce items to market our program, increase our sales, to increase access to fruits and vegetables, to increase engagement and get students excited about eating them? And so part of what has helped us with that is our participation in the Good Food Purchasing program. So we do participate in that program and it's really taught us how to

really align our food purchases with our values and thinking about how we can utilize our purchasing practices and are within the procurement regulations that we have to follow to get the best value out of our product. So realizing that cost may need to be the biggest factor in our decision, it doesn't have to be the only factor in our decision. And kind of reframing that has been a couple of years long process, I would say.

But we've had a lot of staff turnover. We've had a lot of leadership turnover. I think that was probably a big obstacle for us. But having those values to point back to and say, you know, this is who we are. This is why we do what we do. And keeping those top of mind and helping to use that through those transitions, I think really helped us to get past that and then to really like lean into this identity of, you know, we're here for the students. We do it because it's healthy, it's good. And we

We love getting creative and figuring out how to make it happen. Creativity loves constraints. So give us a constraint. We'll be creative within it.

Jollie (23:00)
Yeah,

that's great. that's neat. Tell me about that program real quick, if you could. What was it? Good food purchasing?

Marissa Bell (23:07)
Yeah, it's the good food purchasing program and the center for good food purchasing is a national nonprofit who pretty much puts out this standards based purchasing framework. so you, they help guide you through how to purchase your foods within regulations to meet certain values. Like they say, for example,

Our goal would be to purchase a minimum of 15 % of our products from local vendors and they help us analyze the data. They sit with us annually to assess all of our food purchases and where all of our dollars are going and seeing how we're tracking on that metric, for example. They have certain standards and metrics for assessing the nutrition of your foods in your schools and so they have a nutrition checklist and so we can see how we're tracking year to year on that.

And they go as far as to say, you know, what's the carbon footprint of your menu? And we have worked with them to say, okay, where can we either bring in, you know, proteins that may be better for the environment in terms of how they're produced or how can we reduce the amount of menu items on our menu that are meat-based, for example?

Jollie (24:16)
So so we mentioned in the beginning, Lake Travis is is on the more affluent side. If y'all only have 10 percent free reduced school lunch. So how long?

With these new programs and healthier environment that you've created, more fresh produce, how much have you all been able to stay within current budget constraints? Or have you been able to build support to grow your budget as well?

Marissa Bell (24:43)
Yeah, that's a great question. Our sort of actually say that although we are more fluent district, we still have very similar budget constraints to to most school districts. Especially because we are subsidizing our own meals at the middle and high school level. So for those meals where we're giving them away for free or reduced price at our middle and high schools, we're not receiving any federal reimbursement. It's it's a complete. We're spending money on the food and we're not receiving any revenue for those.

those meals. So we have to make up for those costs in other ways. And so in some ways, I'd say we can be tighter. And so we have had to look at streamlining our options, for example, to say, OK, maybe we offer unlimited fruits and vegetables, but we can't have the variety that we used to have so that we can make sure that we're reducing waste and keeping tight inventory to make sure that we're using what we go through.

We've created a complete your plate station at the high school level. We're piloting that this year where students can top their plate with the unlimited fruits and vegetables in a salad bar style at the high school level. And one way we've been able to reduce costs there is to divert some product from our middle and elementary schools that would otherwise go to waste. And we pull that product up to the high school and we say, OK, it can be served out here. Or we utilize what's called DOD funds.

dollars, entitlement dollars from the government that we can spend on local or on produce, I should say. And that's a free to us. And so when we use those funds to put towards more fruits and vegetables, we can reduce costs that way too. So those are some strategies that we've used to bring these options to our students. we, yeah, we definitely are looking at, okay.

Where's the bottom line? How are we managing costs here? It has to make sense for everyone.

Jollie (26:25)
Yeah, sure. So what are...

So guess just a straightforward question would be like, kids eating healthier now than they were, say, five years ago? And like, how do you measure that? What kind of metrics have you all used to say, are our kids healthier now?

Marissa Bell (26:42)
Yeah, that's a great question again. I was thinking about that myself. You know, how do you measure this success? Because a lot of times I'd say at this point it's anecdotal. Seeing how the students engage with and talk about healthy foods I think is our biggest metric of success. I can tell you five years ago when I started and I asked students what the word local meant or why it was important to eat locally. No one could tell me what it means and now I can walk into any classroom on any.

any campus and the students can tell me what local is, what it means, what are the benefits, that it's more flavorful, it can be more nutritious because it's traveling a shorter distance. And to me, that's been probably one of the biggest metrics of success because they're really absorbing that knowledge. I'd say too that we're starting to track the amount of servings of those extra fruits and vegetables we're selling or serving, I should say, if we're not selling them, they're going out to our students for free.

By tracking that number, we'll be able to start kind of seeing this impact our our students taking more fruits and vegetables, for example. So we are able to to use our software systems and our POS buttons to see how many times that buttons been pressed, for example. So we're trying to build in those metrics now. But for now, I'd say it's it's primarily anecdotal. I can share another story about. I we did an event once of.

It was a farmer's market style taste test where all students had an opportunity to sample fresh fruits and vegetables. And at lunchtime, bring them up table by table to our little display booth and they get to see what the produce looks like in its whole form. Like they'd see it at the farmer's market or at the grocery store. And then they get a cut up sample and then they all get to try it together. And I get on the microphone and I talk about it with them. And after one of those events, one night I was shopping in the community at the grocery store and I.

had a student run up behind me and jump right up in front of me. And she said, hey, I know you. I talked to you today and we tried fruits and vegetables. And she said, guess what? And I said, what? She said, I'm here with my mom to buy sugar snap peas because I tried them earlier today and I loved them. And so she went straight home and she told her parent to bring her to the store and get me some darn sugar snap peas. And I think that's been my biggest metric of success is, you know, seeing that domino effect in the community.

Jollie (28:38)
my god, this is so cool.

my gosh, you didn't happen to get to talk to her parents then at the store, did you?

Marissa Bell (28:55)
No,

I know she was on the other aisle. I know.

Jollie (28:58)
That would have been so cool. Like that must have

made you feel just unbelievable.

Marissa Bell (29:02)
Yeah, that's what keeps me going.

Jollie (29:04)
That's really cool.

I think a lot of school districts will face similar type pushback when they want to start saying like, Hey, let's, let's work on a farm to school program or, you know, let's work on, some type of new program program. Maybe it's salad bars or something. I think you'll frequently hear like, kids don't want to eat the healthier stuff. And we don't want kids to go home hungry. Like that's our worst.

fear. what would you say to someone like that?

Marissa Bell (29:34)
Yeah. So I would definitely say sparking curiosity is really important in in school nutrition so that students are inherently selecting and excited to select the healthier options. I do think that in school nutrition we are challenged in the sense that we students want what they get at home. And so we often find that you know chicken nuggets are familiar to students. That's what they want. They do want a chicken nugget, but how

how can we take that and responsibly create a healthier food environment? And so, similar to when you're introducing foods with a newborn or toddler, you wanna offer familiar foods alongside those healthier options so that they become less unfamiliar. And so, our strategy is to make sure that students have familiar options available, but they also have these new and maybe unfamiliar, uncomfortable foods available too.

that we can integrate together. And so, yeah, that's our strategy.

Jollie (30:28)
love that. So another thing, a recent thing y'all had just a couple days ago, your big like synchronized crunch, which I just loved. I loved the idea and I'll let you explain it, but the other thing I loved is I saw a picture of you up on stage and you just had the biggest smile on your face.

And like you drew all the kids in, the kids looked excited. They were all smiling and laughing. So tell us about the synchronized crunch and how that came to be.

Marissa Bell (30:56)
So last Friday was Texas Fruit and Vegetable Day. It's a newish holiday. Last year was the first Texas Fruit and Vegetable Day. This is our second Texas Fruit and Vegetable Day. And so to celebrate, we had a synchronized carrot crunch for one of our elementary schools. we purchased local organic carrots through the Central Texas Food Hub. And we got those delivered. And we cut those up. And every student got two or three carrot sticks.

And we passed out those samples to everyone at each lunch period. And we had our little display booth and we had a balloon arch with carrot balloons and we had a carrot banner and we had carrot facts all along the lunch line so that the students could walk through the lunch line and see and read all about carrots and their benefits and how they grow. And so we're just hitting them with facts all over the place and getting them excited about carrots. And then we.

pretty much invited them all table by table after they went through the lunch line the first time and got all their lunch. They're all seated and eating. We invite them to come grab a sample. And then I told them, save your sample, save your sample. We're gonna honor our local farmers today and we're gonna celebrate healthy eating and we're gonna do a synchronized crunch. And so we did a countdown, a three, two, one, and all the students crunched all at the same time in celebration of healthy eating and to honor our local farmers, which was really, really fun. And it got them engaged and excited.

And I had stickers in my pocket, carrot stickers that I would pass out to students who answered my questions about, you know, what fun facts did you read on the lunch line? How do carrots grow? What does local mean? How does this taste to you? And, and I put the kids on the microphone and so they're excited to get on the microphone. ⁓ yup, exactly. So they get to know and they get to share. so that is also kind of peer learning too. So if they say it, you know, that might be better received than if I'm saying it.

Jollie (32:31)
yeah, of course. In front of their friends, sure.

Marissa Bell (32:44)
we all get a chance to learn from each other and it was a really fun event. I would definitely recommend doing a carrot crunch.

Jollie (32:51)
This sounds like so much

fun. So how often are you interacting with the kids? Whether it's nutrition facts or things that just building nutrition knowledge for kids, how much of that interaction happens in your district?

Marissa Bell (33:06)
Yeah, I am. So I develop a lot of passive nutrition education materials for our students to display in the cafeteria. We have. We have, I would say that we consider our cafeteria like a learning lab or an extension of the classroom, and so I really try to get as much education materials as we can in a passive way while they're making those decisions in the lunch line. They're reading about.

You know, certain fruits and vegetables are the colors and the vitamins that the colors provide. So they can say, you know, I have a cut. Maybe I want to grab a leafy green today because it's good for my healing. so we create those opportunities. say pretty consistently, those are always in the cafeteria. as far as those hands on activities, I'd say, once a month to once a quarter, depending on, on capacity right now. So,

We used to partner with our local produce vendor who would come out about once a month with us and help me kind of cut all those vegetables for all the 700 students at an elementary school. And so that allowed me to be out there much more frequently. and so now I'm doing it by myself. So I have to kind of wait until I have a student or a dietetic intern to come help me do, do those types of events. But, yeah, I'd say I'd like to be out there a lot more. My goal is once a month. Yeah.

Jollie (34:19)
Okay, that's a good goal. So here's another

goal. Something I've been thinking about as we like start digging into healthy environments at our elementary school and high school is like, is there any opportunity to reach the parents as well? And hopefully you get the kids excited enough.

that they run home and tell their parents like, hey, I tried to sugar snap peas. And you you get to the parents that way. have you, have you seen any other success getting to the parents?

Marissa Bell (34:50)
Yes, we started a school health advisory council wellness newsletter a few years ago. so quarterly I write a newsletter article that goes out district wide to all of our parents. And we we get input from physical activity representative in the district. We get our health and social emotional learning director involved. I write an article and so it's kind of this whole whole student wellness approach and we each write an article from our respective

specialties and we distribute that. So that's been helpful. Also, I've been working on trying to form more partnerships with on campus PTAs, PTOs and like garden, school garden committees, for example. So that's probably on my radar is one of the things that I think we could be working on and forming those really.

finding those parent advocates at the school level who are going to help and support and provide that capacity that maybe I don't have as an individual. yeah, identify those parents, definitely.

Jollie (35:48)
Yeah, because I mean, everyone is limited on staff, limited on budget. And of course, there's so many things you'd want to do if you had time and money. But I think that's a fantastic resource. mean, there's a ton of parents that are going to be like so crazy, stressful jobs and after school activities with kids. there's others that are like primed to hear this message. And like, I'm sure would be ecstatic to like, hey, we got this.

cool need over here. Like, would you like to help? Like those payments are out there.

Marissa Bell (36:18)
Yes,

they are out there and our goal next year. So this year we went and spoke to all the PTA presidents and we presented about what we're doing in our food and nutrition program and with the hope that they would then take that out to their campus PTAs. But next year our goal is to go to present to each of the campus level ones where the parents are present. And so we're slowly but surely trying to get in front of and tell our story and identify those community partners. Because I think collaboration is

Yeah, it leads to innovation and it helps. Yeah, it's where the magic happens.

Jollie (36:46)
happens.

Are y'all doing anything with hydroponics?

Marissa Bell (36:51)
Yes, we are. Funny you should ask. I had my first harvest yesterday. Yeah. Yeah, we did lettuce. We've got basil growing too. It wasn't quite ready yet, but we did. We got a Lake Travis Education Foundation grant through our school district to, we purchased a single hydroponic flex farm and it's through fork farms, I believe. And they have a

Jollie (36:54)
no, good. what did you harvest? That's exciting.

Marissa Bell (37:16)
A K through 12 curriculum that we can utilize. but we haven't tapped into that yet. We've been piloting it up here at our school office, our central administration office. So we know how to maintenance it. And so we can guide people once it's in their cafeterias on how to maintenance it. So, we had the pilot run this week or this last couple of weeks, and we just did our harvest yesterday and yep, we got some lettuce and the goal is going to be to.

Rotate that unit between campuses between growing cycles. So takes about 30 days to grow full growing cycle. The students will be able to participate will partner with teachers in the classroom to get the students to come help plant the seeds and transplant them into the unit and then they have curriculum that can go along with that. And then we'll have it growing next to the lunch line so the students can see exactly you know how their lettuce is growing on the lunch line. We do source are we work with a.

local hydroponic farm called True Harvest for all of our lettuce. And so all of our lettuce is actually hydroponically grown. So they get to learn what that process is like and how their food comes, how their food grows and where it comes from. And yeah, we're really excited about it.

Jollie (38:19)
so cool. I love that. so, so that system's a pretty decent size and you can get a decent harvest. There's, you know, desktops and then much, much larger ones. It's, it's on the larger side. So like one harvest from that, like, is that like one day's worth of lettuce or how much are y'all able to get it? Or do you even know at this point yet?

Marissa Bell (38:39)
My estimate, my high level estimate, Jollie, is that it's gonna probably get us through about two to three weeks in the school campus at the elementary level, at least. I think we go through, we go through more lettuce at our middle and high schools because we do have salad bars there. At the elementary level, we're still pre-boxing those salads for them since they have a hard time managing the salad bar. But in those...

those salad bowls, I think we'll get, we do that and we serve little side salads on the lunch line. And so that could probably get us through, through two weeks.

Jollie (39:09)
Wow, that's a lot actually. Yeah. How many elementary schools do you have? Okay.

Marissa Bell (39:15)
We have seven.

So I'm sorry, that would be for one campus. Yeah, so the campus who will be housing the unit and watching it grow. Yeah.

Jollie (39:18)
okay, got it. yeah.

That's right. Yeah.

But still, that's a lot.

So if you're trying to change things and you have people come and go, instead of having to reteach and relearn and get buy in again, you recommended to try to change policy

so that you can just fall back to the policy. Hey, this is policy. So we need to figure out how to make it work. And one of the specific examples you gave me is like getting broccoli on the lunch trays in exchange for taking the french fries off. And I think you said you the fries are still available, but they don't automatically come with the meal. And they're now on the a la carte menu. And by the way,

we increase the price to encourage them to eat healthier foods like broccoli. can you share a little bit about that?

Marissa Bell (40:07)
Yeah, definitely. So we we've been trying really hard to do some strategic pricing strategies to help encourage and incentivize the purchase of healthier food options. So what that looks like is this past year at our elementary level, we increased the cost of ice cream by 25 cents and we decreased the cost of a serving of fruit and vegetables by 25 cents. So we displaced that that dollar amount and that then helps. They used to be each a dollar. And so.

Now you're going to be more incentivized to purchase the healthier food options. So strategic placement on the lunch line, as well as strategic pricing, are ways that we can help encourage those healthier choices as well. You mentioned the french fries and that was, this is a personal passion of mine, but when I first arrived here, we would always serve french fries with almost every meal looked like at our.

high school level because we aren't on the national school lunch program. So we're not required to follow the nutrition guidelines that come along with that. And so, we fell into that, you know, what are the students wanting and what are they going to buy? And that's what we're going to serve because that's going to increase our sales. so, after having sat back and observed, my perception is that the students will still buy French fries.

whether or not they come with the meal or they're sold a la carte as an extra. And so part of our team's strategy this year is to try to only offer french fries one day a week as part of the meal. The rest of the time they can be served every day, but they can be served a la carte as an extra item, price them accordingly. And then that allows us to serve and say, hey, for the meal price, you're getting a balanced nutritional meal with a fruit or

like fruits and vegetables as your sides. And so now our plate looks a lot different. Students still have that option. We're not taking away that sense of autonomy or anything, but we have both now. So it's that strategy to try to create healthier food environments.

Jollie (41:57)
Strategic pricing. I like that.

Are there any other policy changes that y'all have gone through that you might recommend someone try to tackle?

Marissa Bell (42:06)
Yeah, we haven't gone through it yet, but what we plan to do this summer is to update our procurement manual. So we have a, this is what guides all of our purchasing decisions in our food and nutrition department. So most, if not all, food service departments will have a purchasing manual. And so part of that in there, we have to say,

If this, then this, this is what's going to guide our decision on, how to purchase. And so one of the things that we can do now by law, the laws have changed because people have advocated for things like a geographic preference. So allowing us to consider the proximity of a product to our door to be able to make it easier to source that item. So instead of just saying low cost, has to be the lowest cost. can also say, you know,

it's closer to our door as well. So it may be a little bit more expensive, but we can in a bid arrangement, so similar to construction, you go out to bid and you go with the lowest cost is kind of the scenario. Instead of just considering that lowest cost, you can also consider things like geographic preference. And so our goal is to identify in our procurement manual what that geographic preference is and how many points on a rubric of a bid evaluation, for example, we would award to somebody who's maybe within

50 miles of our school district versus 100 miles versus 250 miles. And so we can kind of score vendors accordingly. So those that are closer to us are able to sell to us more easily.

Jollie (43:30)
that is so neat. Do you know if you haven't worked in a system that used a vendor for school nutrition? So a lot of these initiatives that you all have implemented, I'm just wondering if they can be implemented with the vendor as well. Have you talked to any colleagues in other districts that are using vendors to see how they're?

Marissa Bell (43:51)
Like

food service management companies? No, we have not been partnering. Most of our school districts that we partner with here locally are self operated is what we call it. So we are district employees. I've not worked closely with anyone who is a food service management company. Not in the last couple of years that I've been been doing this, but that yeah, you raise a good point. It is a different approach for sure, and I think that's it's a big key to to figure out how they can do some of these things as well.

Jollie (43:53)
Right,

Yeah, no, that's a fan.

Yeah, so, all right. So let's see, maybe, a second to last question is, like what, what other ideas are, have been like swirling around in, in, your brand and your team that, like, what, do want to tackle next? Like, what would help get the kids even healthier food choices?

Marissa Bell (44:36)
We are part of our goal is to really partner with those school gardens. I think that's the one area of farm to school that we have not really dove into as much and really create that cohesiveness between the school gardens and the schools. So really taking inventory of which schools have gardens, which parents are taking lead on that, building the relationships with those parents and using that as opportunities to connect the students to the cafeteria.

Whether that looks like maybe us going in and doing a guest lecture in the in the garden or potentially even making plans for them to help grow products for our schools. That would be a dream. So that's our goal. I'd say another area is our physical activity. We've had a lot of turnover with our physical activity leadership here in Lake Travis. And so that's representation we don't really have on our school health advisory council as much anymore. And so

I know that the person prior to me in this role really formed a lot of partnerships and relationships with the PE teachers to be able to do nutrition education in the PE setting as well. And so if we can hit them from all of these areas with nutrition, integrate it into all aspects of the school, it'll just become natural and habitual, which is the goal. So really forming partnerships and identifying opportunities to partner with the, the PE teachers as well, I would say is, is big on our radar.

Jollie (45:54)
Yeah, I think that's that is going to be the future direction because by the time a student graduates from high school they need to know how to cook and they knew need to know how to grow their own food

 I mean, there's just basic things like everything we're doing with interrupt hunger is teach folks to cook, teach them to garden, create more opportunities for physical activity, more opportunities to give back and volunteer and then just inject as much community into those four as we can. We can do that at local businesses. We've started doing that at elementary schools and we have our first pilot program at a high school and it's just fantastic. So.

It's neat when you like, all you need is a spark with one person and then, you know, they're going to start brainstorming and you can get the school garden idea. You know, I mean, it can touch a lot of people because a lot of high schools have an ag department. They might have an architect department that could build the school garden. You might have a culinary, department that could do something. And, you know, all whether it is used to.

Like let the kids just experience and take home, whether it's used in the cafeteria, whether some portion of it is used as a donation garden, which gets kids, you know, come out of healthy eating and nutrition from a different angle. They think they're helping people and they don't realize by default they're like learning about healthy eating. There's just a lot of different angles and perspectives you can you can come up with this. I love the way you're thinking.

Marissa Bell (47:18)
It's all about exposure. The more we expose, the more normal it is. You're creating a sense of normalcy around it. It's no longer the unique thing, right? Like you want to make it normal to have these healthy eating behaviors and approaches. And yeah, it's really exciting.

Jollie (47:31)
So last question, is there anything else we haven't touched on that you might want to leave with folks who their hearts in the right place, they're motivated. Any kind of words of wisdom or anything you could share?

Marissa Bell (47:44)
I think the biggest thing I would say is there's a lot of good work already happening and it may appear that. You know, there's not a lot going on in in your school, but if you're interested in finding out, I'd say ask questions first go to the food service providers of your school district and ask them what initiatives they already have going on and see where you can plug in there and build that trust in that relationship and and hear what their challenges are and see where you can help and.

Yeah, just tell as, food service directors and as food service operators, I'd say, share your story because people don't know what you're doing. so there's school food has a bad rep and, anything you can do to kind of reframe that and say, Hey, no, like we're only as good as the system that we're purchasing within or that we're operating within. Right. And so school food service has a big uphill battle to face, but there's levers for change and identifying.

Jollie (48:20)
It Yeah.

Marissa Bell (48:35)
where those are and those low-hanging fruit is it starts with a conversation with your food service providers at your school district. And I just, yeah, really want to, cannot overstate sharing your story. think it inspires others to do the same work. There's so much great things happening and no one needs to reinvent a wheel. I did not invent carrot crunch, but it has been a hit. Somebody else came up with a cucumber crunch and I said, carrot, carrot sounds like.

a good word to rhyme with crunch. we created our own carrot crunch, but yeah, no original ideas over here. This is all, all collaboration.

Jollie (49:08)
That,

know, I just want to take a moment on this to see, share what we've experienced because, just being a parent, you want your kid to have the best education, the best environment, the best food. And it's easy to see something you don't like and complain about it. when I went and talked to our, nutrition director, I would say they were, they were pretty defensive and we had to really.

explain that we're here not to bash you at all, but be supportive and understand your needs, exactly what you said. And when they realized that we weren't there just to bash them, like, hey, this is a partnership, let's work together. they just opened up. And what we found is every step in the way of me and a friend have joined the district's menu advisory.

I think that's what it called, Menu Advisor Committee. So we've gotten to meet more and more. I met one of our dietitians last night. Like everybody,  they have the absolute...

best intentions for your kids. they want them to be as healthy as you can. And they all have like all these creative ideas. And so I think back to like just in business and in sales and marketing, like whoever tells the best story wins. I think that's really good advice. And the next time I speak with our nutrition folks,

Marissa Bell (50:15)
Mm-hmm.

Jollie (50:20)
Like, hey, y'all gotta tell your story better because y'all all have like great ideas and you're all excited about food and you all want the kids to like the food they eat. You don't want them to go home hungry. You all have big hearts. work harder to tell your story. I love that. That's that's fantastic advice, Marissa.

Marissa Bell (50:37)
Thank you. will say, think food service providers, do care so much about the feedback from parents and students, and that's what really guides the menu. giving constructive feedback though is key. And to maybe ask why something is happening before giving feedback on how to change it. I think that's maybe a different approach that it's hard when everybody cares so much and parents care, they wanna know that their kids are getting great food, right? And so to really figure out why something is happening.

and being able to address the root problem, think, is really helpful for everybody.

Jollie (51:08)
And then just get everybody involved, whether it's parents and PTO and individual school administration and leadership, the board of trustees, and the nutrition department. There's so many roles and interested parties. That's a huge collaboration that you can pull together.

Marissa Bell (51:11)
Mm-hmm.

Jollie (51:27)
Thank you so much, Marissa. This has been fantastic. I've really enjoyed getting to know you and you let me pepper you with questions and you've been so willing to share your knowledge and all the neat things y'all are doing at Lake Travis. So thank you so much.

Marissa Bell (51:39)
Thank you for the opportunity. this is case in point or proof in point, would say, because Jollie, I have a lot to learn from you. You guys are doing incredible things there in Boerne and yeah, I'm really excited to continue partnering and collaborating with you.

Jollie (51:51)
Very cool. We will definitely make that happen. So all right. last thing. How can people find you if they want to reach out to you or where do you post a lot?

Marissa Bell (51:59)
Yeah, I'd probably say LinkedIn is where I post the most. My name is Marissa Bell. And the district, we have a district food service account that we use occasionally called LT Cafes. We're on Instagram. And then we partner with our district communications team pretty frequently to actually post on like our district Facebook page about our program. And that helps with our capacity too. So if we're not managing the social media, we can let somebody else tell our story. They tell it really well.

Jollie (52:24)
That's a job. passion. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Marissa. I appreciate you. Have a good one.

Marissa Bell (52:24)
That is at LTSD schools.

Thanks, Jollie, you too. Bye-bye.