As part of the battle against obesity, the Illinois Center for Soy Foods at the University of Illinois has launched a pilot program to demonstrate the benefits of including soy in the state's school lunch programs. The program will be a joint effort with the Illinois Soybean Association and Archer Daniels Midland.
The school districts included in the study are the Pekin School District, the Champaign School District, the Decatur School District, and the Murphysboro School District. The schools were selected to give a cross section of the elementary school populations in the state of Illinois.
"Many school lunches exceed the maximum fat content allowed by regulations," said Barbara Klein, co-director of the Center and emeritus professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the U of I. "By adding soy to school lunches, we plan to reduce the overall fat content of the meals."
Klein notes that the pilot project is part of an effort by the Center to be an active participant in the fight against childhood obesity.
"Our youth are becoming increasingly overweight," she said. "Many school lunch programs inadvertently contribute to this problem by offering high-fat lunches. Working together we hope to become part of the solution for overcoming this increasingly important health issue."
She pointed out that the project will involve enhancing some of the more expensive items on the menu, thereby helping to reduce overall costs for running the lunch programs.
"Soy can also play a major role in improving food quality," Klein said. "It has functional properties that can improve the taste and extend the freshness of many food products."
A major focus of the pilot program will be to demonstrate consumer acceptability of soy and soy-enhanced foods and show how they can be easily incorporated into the school lunch programs.
"We will be working with food manufacturers and food service vendors to make products for the test program," Klein said. "Many of these foods will be popular entrees in which soy will be used to replace some or all of the meat. For example, we may provide a taco filling that is a mixture of soy and ground meat, and we may make a vegetarian ravioli."
As part of the consumer acceptance study, those items will replace the usual entrée and be compared to the acceptability of the standard menu item. The plan is to work with children, teachers, and members of the local Parent-Teachers Association to provide educational information about nutrition, food preparation, and how to incorporate soy into a healthy lifestyle.
"The pilot program will test soy foods in one or two schools within each of the selected districts," Klein said. "We will do everything possible to ensure that the product testing and data gathering will operate as smoothly as possible and with minimal disruption to the normal routine in the schools."
