Chefs help needy students learn about nutrition

Saturday, Aug. 26, 2000 | 9:42 a.m.

Not everybody associates Las Vegas -- land of all-you-can-eat buffets -- with healthy eating and high nutritional values. But when it comes to educating children, local chefs beg to differ.

Eleven years ago Las Vegas chefs joined with the University of Nevada, Reno's Cooperative Extension health and nutrition program to reach at-risk elementary students who weren't eating properly.

Since then the group, Chefs for Kids, has educated -- and fed -- nearly 11,000 Clark County students.

The organization has a full-time nutritionist to teach first and second grade students at four of Clark County's most needy elementary schools. Also, local chefs get together to serve a hot meal once a month at one of the schools.

This fall, in an effort to reach every first grader in the Clark County School District, the group will launch a five-part nutrition video-curriculum package.

Eating wrong

Children are not eating properly, often eating something sweet for breakfast that has no nutritional value, according to Brenda Hitchins, Chefs for Kids secretary. "They're just not getting balanced meals."

As the Rio hotel-casino's executive pastry chef, Hitchins oversees a staff of 47 who produce baked goods 24 hours a day, seven days a week to feed the thousands of tourists at its restaurants and buffets.

But in her spare time she organizes events and puts together meal packages to be auctioned at the group's annual auction, its main fund-raiser.

Proceeds from the auctions, where people can bid for dinner packages ranging from simple picnics to seven-course meals, fund the nutritionist.

May's auction at the Mandalay Bay raised $120,000.

The group is sponsored by the Fraternity of Executive Chefs of Las Vegas. More than 30 chefs comprise the core committee, and hundreds of others donate their time to prepare meals for students each month or to provide meals won at the auctions. Restaurant distributors contribute food.

Between 72 percent and 82 percent of the targeted students receive government-assisted lunches. Those students are most likely to come from transitional families, single-parent homes or the homeless.

Never enough

"You realize while you're doing as much as you can, you're not doing enough," said Terry Henderson, Barbary Coast executive chef and chairman of Chefs for Kids. "There's just a lot of people out there who need help."

Susan Lednicky of the Cooperative Extension, has worked with the student for nine years. She said many lack proper nutritional education.

"These kids have so few experiences," she said. "I have kids who have never seen a mushroom, and one girl who had never eaten a carrot. Nobody had the time -- and she said nobody had (carrots) at home.

"A lot of kids don't eat at all," she said. "They don't want to eat breakfast. Some, like adults, don't have the time. Some don't have food in the house."

Children are also eating a lot of fast food, she said. Some will eat a doughnut rather than hot breakfasts provided at the school for free or at a reduced price.

One problem is school clubs selling Popsicles or chips. "Kids are getting the message that these (fast) foods are fine," Lednicky said.

Need for education

Nutrition education is part of the health curriculum, but most teachers don't have a deep nutritional background, Lednicky said. And because of the amount of programs they teach, "nutrition probably falls on the bottom."

Robin Collins, the program's nutritionist, teaches children where food comes from, "why they need to eat, what it does for them, what are the healthiest choices," she said.

Wheat is brought in, and students are taught how bread and butter are made. In some classes, Collins will stir-fry vegetables to introduce them to children.

Students are also taught food safety and personal hygiene, such as washing hands. Second graders are taught the five food groups, and at the end of the school year they receive insulated lunch boxes. Most of the second graders had already taken classes with the nutritionist in first grade.

"We try to get the same group of kids so they are covered for two years," Lednicky said. "That way it's kind of ingrained in them. Even by fifth grade they still remember the basics."

The auctions also fund informational handouts for students and worksheets and food used for demonstrations, Lednicky said. Whatever isn't covered by the auctions, the Cooperative Extension covers.

"Without the chefs, we probably couldn't have this program," she said.

Started in 1989, the program is an extension of the American Culinary Federation's Chef and Child Foundation Inc., a similar program that provides nutrition education and dietary assistance to preschool and elementary children. But to ensure the money raised at the auctions stayed in Southern Nevada, the chefs formed Chefs for Kids.

"You're giving back to the kids," Hitchins said. "All that money stays here in Las Vegas. I don't know one hotel that really hasn't gotten involved in this."

A family affair

The program's highlight is the monthly hot meals that the chefs prepare and serve. A recent meal from Lawry's The Prime Rib restaurant, for example, served prime rib, mashed potatoes and creamed corn. "Fifteen hundred people were fed that day," Henderson said.

Many hotels will send a mascot along with the chefs, such as the Rio's "Rio Rita," a Circus Circus clown or the Orleans' alligator.

"When they hear we're coming to the school, entire neighborhoods come out," Henderson said. "Some of the children who come are little brothers and sisters of the students. Some of the meals we give them are going to be the only hot meal they get all day."

Hitchins was just as surprised.

"How can this town with so many people, so many buffets, have so many starving kids?"