New yogurt-based recipes chosen for school lunch program

10-Feb-2019 - Last updated on 10-Feb-2019 at 19:37 GMT

The yogurt meals were all tested in a school production kitchen and taste-tested by students.

Related tags Yogurt school meals vegetarian

Danone North America and the Chef Ann Foundation (CAF) have chosen 12 yogurt-based foods submitted by school districts across the country. Yogurt is considered a meat alternate in school meals and services the growing popularity of vegetarian diets.

CAF runs TheLunchBox.org, a national online database for school food change. In the fall CAF partnered with Danone and announced the Real School Food Recipe Contest, searching for healthy recipes that found new ways to use bulk yogurt.

The final 12 recipes were chosen just after the New Year and are featured on TheLunchBox.org. Each recipe was submitted by a different school district, and they were awarded seven professional development course scholarships to the School Food Institute, CAF's online learning platform.

According to CAF, “Courses available to contest winners include School Food 101, Plant Forward, and Sustainable Lunchrooms. These online courses leverage Chef Ann's extensive experience in transitioning school food programs to cook-from-scratch, serving whole fresh, healthy food to kids.”

All the recipes have been analyzed for the USDA meal components and have ingredients, nutrition facts and instructions logged on the Lunch Box website. The yogurt in the dishes was designed to replace less healthy ingredients like cream cheese, mayonnaise and sour cream.

The 12 winning recipes are Broccoli Cheddar Soup, Chicken Salad with Fruit, Curry Turkey Stew, Maple Peach Muffin, Potatoes Au Gratin, Pineapple Chia Pudding, Summer Squash Lasagna, Veggie Wrap, Vegilicious Pasta Salad, Very Berry Yogurt Pizza, Whey Good White Pizza and Yogurt Chia Composite.

The meals were all tested in a school production kitchen and taste-tested by students. The Farm to School Recipes featured on TheLunchBox.org were created with support from a USDA Farm to School Grant.

CAF operates as a nonprofit that provides school communities with resources and funding to help transition their food programs from highly-processed to cook-from-scratch operations.