Brighton Superintendent: School Lunch Sales Not Affected by New Health Guidelines

Brighton Area Schools lunch sales have not been negatively impacted by new federal requirements to increase nutritional values and reduce sodium and saturated fat levels in school meals, according to Brighton Superintendent Greg Gray.

The new guidelines, set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, separate school lunches into five components: meats/meat alternates, grains, fruits, vegetables and milk. A student must take three of the five components for it to be considered a meal, and one of those components must be a fruit or a vegetable.

Lunch sales across the district are not statistically significant, Gray said. The only school that has had any noticeable difference is Brighton High School, which is down about $4,000 in lunch sales.

According to Gray, the high school sells about $5,000 worth of school lunches per day. The decrease in sales can be accounted for with freshmens' first day of school, where most of them ate with Brighton Kickoff Mentoring Program (B-KOM) students.

"My son and my daughter eats it (school lunch) one day a week, other than that, we pack lunches - always have - and they haven't said anything about it," Gray said. "My son would complain if it was bad."

Gray gave kudos to Richard Browder, the director of student nutrition, and the food service department for adapting to a lot of changes and tougher restrictions in a positive way.