Students from Maryland High Schools will help create healthy new items for school lunch menus under a USDA grant, reports Maryland Community News Online's Gazette.net. The students are members of the ProStart,a national two-year program that prepares high school students for jobs in the culinary and foodservice industries. They will form Culinary & Healthful Enhancement of Foods teams that will create the recipes, using locally grown produce where possible.
The $346,000 grant was awarded to the Maryland State Dept. of Education and the Restaurant Association of Maryland Education Foundation, which partnered on the idea. The recipes must follow National School Lunch Program nutrition guidelines and fit within school lunch budgets.