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By Leo Pieri
 WSP Professor Grace Hendel has received a grant of $28,500 for an educational program
to improve nutrition management in public school food services, and to encourage better eating habits among young
people. Hendel, a professor of food and nutrition at the UWSP School of Home Economics, will head the pilot
project which is funded by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. Hendel said the program is designed to
train supervisors and managers of school food services to promote better nutrition practices among children. She
said the program might be called an "attack on junk food." The program will operate through state educational
facilities. Hendel said that others along with herself have been working wit hthe state to develop a nutrition
educational program for about the last six years. Supervisors and managers of public food services can now enroll
in programs next summer at Stevens Point, Menomonie, Madison, Appleton and Oak Creek. The instructors of the
program courses will be from several UW-System schools, and from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
According to Hendel the program will offer various courses in food management. The courses will involve nutrition
requirements, management, personnel and cost control, financial menu planning and food menu planning. "We want to
get them involved with teaching and working with teachers and students," said Hendel. Hendel said that the state
educational network is being used as a source of making some of the program courses easily available to food
managers and supervisors across the state. The courses will run from one to five days in length. Hendel will be
assisted by UWSP Home Economics Norma Brook and Diane Libby in developing the courses. Hendel hopes the program
will teach people in schools more about proper eating habits. "It's a way to attract people's attention to proper
nutrition," she said. The food nutritionist said that many things in school menus right now need to be reevaluated
in terms of their nutritional quality. She said foods with a gelatin base, with no fruit, are appearing on school
menus and have no nutritional values. Hendel feels that kids need to be educated in order to choose wisely what
they will eat. "You have to get the kids to participate in the food programs, making it more attractive to them,"
she said. "The people planning menus should have input from the students." A good way to educate students about
nutrition, according to Hendel, is to allow them to make choices in foods. "We're trying to give them a choice of
similar foods. Give them a choice of carrots versus spinach, let them try dips and things," she said. "We neeed
to let them make choices." "We're trying to get them away from junk foods, things which are in vending machines,"
said Hendel. But Hendel admitted that some kids will never learn proper eating habits. Hendel said the managers
and supervisors in the state school food services are doing a fantastic job. She said the Nutrition Education
Training Act of 1977, to train school managers, has helped work nutrition into the school curriculum, to teach
teachers, workers, food service managers and students about nutrition.
*The Pointer, November 1979, pg.5
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