Meals Cater To Youngsters In Day Care

Four-year-old Matthew is methodically working his way through lunch at University District Cooperative Day Care. He tries everything - salmon patty, breadsticks, broccoli, cauliflower, cantaloupe - and pretty much cleans up his plate.

Beside him, fellow pupil Lilly nibbles at her vegetables and plays with her cantaloupe. Ravenous she's not.

When it comes to food, pleasing everybody is impossible, and that goes double for kids.

But a fledgling Seattle catering company is making a stab at it by preparing and delivering meals to day-care centers such as this one, strongly emphasizing variety and nutrition.

Started in June, The Children's Kitchen became only the second professional catering service in Seattle to serve day-care kids. Common Meals, the first (except for a now-closed '80s enterprise), began doing so last January. Both draw praise from Char McKay, nutritionist for Seattle ECEAP (Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program).

"I'm very, very impressed with both of them," McKay said. "We now have two really excellent caterers available to (day-care centers). It's a significant trend that wasn't there a year ago."

She said both services emphasize good nutrition, offer "very high-quality food," and include lots of fruits and vegetables.

Now, yet another caterer, Pioneer Foods of Capitol Hill, has started serving one day-care center and expects to expand, although McKay had no first-hand knowledge of this one.

Most day-care centers prepare their own breakfasts, lunches and snacks, but that's a heavy burden on top of other child-care duties. Says Art Wright, director of Adams Kids Co., a Ballard day care and Children's Kitchen client: "Originally, I was doing the cooking. . . . That made it real tough, believe me."

Getting good kitchen help also is tough for centers with bare-bones budgets. "Given the amount we can pay a cook, we can't get anyone who is really professional," said Kate Kincaid, director of UCC Childcare, also in the U District.

Day-care food frequently is high in fat, salt and sugar, health officials say. And skimpy budgets limit the kinds of food centers can buy. Caterers can do better, through volume buying. This allows The Children's Kitchen to serve lots of fruits and vegetables, says co-director Suzanne Myer.

The Children's Kitchen is a not-for-profit cooperative started by five day-care directors and run by Laura Merkel Wild, a registered dietitian, and Myer, soon to become one.

The two say they intend not only to bring good food to day-care kids, but to help teach nutrition basics. They provide centers with educational packets; a recent one introduced three kinds of apples to children. They especially hope to reach low-income youngsters who may be getting off to a poor start nutritionally.

So far, The Children's Kitchen serves about 250 children at seven day-care centers from the Central Area to Green Lake. The food is prepared in the former Sandpoint Elementary School kitchen, carried to the centers by refrigerated truck, and reheated by microwave (in the case of hot meals) at the centers.

Common Meals operates out of a downtown kitchen and serves about 350 children in six centers, all Head Start programs, says owner David Lee. Caterers serve only a fraction of the estimated 12,500 Seattle children in licensed day-care centers.

To please kids from many backgrounds - Asian, Latino, African-American, etc. - Common Meals meals stress ethnic flair, says Lee. That's vital because children often shun foods they're not used to, says Betty Shuler, public-health nutritionist the Seattle-King County Health Department. Yet it's difficult, given the ethnic diversity from center to center.

Children's Kitchen meals are low in fat and long on whole grains; about half are vegetarian and there are some ethnic foods. Meals are served family style, and children are encouraged to try everything - even lentil salad, which succeeded at some centers but flopped at others.

One center dropped out. It was in a low-income neighborhood, and Wild thinks the children "were not used to these kinds of foods. A lot of the kids were not familiar with eating fruits and vegetables."

So The Children's Kitchen made some changes. "We decided we could have a transition menu, with more meat than we usually serve," Wild said.

Wright, of Adams Kids Co., says the fare has been good all along but at first lacked eye appeal. That's improved, he says. "(Kids) are eating things they shied away from at first."