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NEWS RELEASE

11-08-01

Contacts:
Mary Gregoire, Family and Consumer Sciences, (515) 294-7474
Daniel Henroid, Family and Consumer Sciences, (515) 294-7549
Sue Ellen Tuttle, Family and Consumer Sciences, (515) 294-8799
Kevin Brown, News Service, (515) 294-8986

IOWA STATE CREATES VIRTUAL STANDARDIZED RECIPE PROGRAM FOR SCHOOL DISTRICT USE

AMES, Iowa -- Imagine you are a school district food service manager with a great new recipe for pumpkin bars that feeds 10,000 students. You want to use it, but you only need to serve 3,000 students. What can you do?

Iowa State University can help.

Faculty members in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences at Iowa State have created a set of training materials, including a video and CD-ROM, to help school district food service managers and employees tailor quantity recipes to their needs.

"The challenge is to create recipes that taste the same, meet nutritional requirements and stay within budget constraints," says Mary Gregoire, chair of the department of apparel, education studies and hospitality management and project director.

Gregoire and Dan Henroid, a faculty member in hotel, restaurant, and institution management, began work on the project two years ago with a $154,000 grant from the National Food Service Management Institute. The USDA institute funds research and training materials for K-12 nutrition nationwide.

The CD-ROM outlines the importance of standardized recipes and includes a "recipe adjuster" that automatically computes proper ingredient amounts. Iowa State's Instructional Technology Center aided in the production of the CD-ROM and video.

The project is being tested in eight school districts nationwide. In Iowa, the Nevada Community School District is participating.

Diana Weber, food service director of the Nevada district, said she is pleased with the project.

"When you get quantity recipes from other people, the way they are set up doesn't always work with our equipment," Weber said. "We have two food sites. This program helps us standardize recipes for each building, depending on the equipment and pans that we use."

The final evaluation of the project will be finished in December with production beginning in 2002. The USDA will distribute the package to schools nationwide when completed.

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