Students in the Frankfort-Elberta Area School District<\/a> ate nutritious and delicious food this past school year, thanks to a collaboration between food service manager Jenna Noffsinger (a 2006 Frankfort graduate) and FoodCorps<\/a>, a national nonprofit with a mission of working with communities to \u201cconnect kids to healthy food in school.\u201d<\/p>\n Noffsinger returned to Frankfort in 2012 to put her degree in food science from Michigan State University (MSU)<\/a> to use. She married Chris that summer, and they now have a nearly-two-year-old daughter, Stella, who Noffsinger attributes as the reason that she strives so hard at her job.<\/p>\n \u201cI try to make food for the students that I would also feed my little girl,\u201d says Noffsinger, who just completed her first school year as a full-time food service manager for Frankfort. (Prior to this, she was working part-time at Frankfort.)<\/p>\n FoodCorps\u2014whose local service site partner is MSU Extension<\/a>\u2014placed service member Mikaela Taylor in the Frankfort\/Benzie community this past school year to support and highlight Noffsinger\u2019s utilization of the \u201c10 Cents a Meal\u201d funds<\/a>, which are intended to serve healthy, homemade meals. Since schools only have 20-30 cents per meal to spend on produce, the 10 Cents a Meal program provides matching funds\u2014in the amount of 10 cents per meal\u2014for schools to buy from neighbor farms, thereby investing in local economies and putting Michigan-grown food on children\u2019s plates. This financial cushion helps school food service managers like Noffsinger to try new things.<\/p>\n FoodCorps helped Noffsinger to place local products on the menu, increase exposure to vegetables, and engage students during monthly taste tests that highlighted the respective \u201cHarvest of the Month.\u201d <\/p>\n Noffsinger would prepare a new recipe on a designated day each month and send it to the elementary school. Then Taylor would serve the students sample-size portions of the item and allow them to vote on whether they \u201cloved it,\u201d \u201cliked it,\u201d or \u201ctried it\u201d (but it wasn\u2019t their favorite). Noffsinger would then determine whether that new recipe should go on the menu.<\/p>\n During the 2015-16 school year, students tasted nine new recipes: roasted romanesco cauliflower, baked apples, roasted butternut squash, Panther Fries (roasted rainbow carrots), un-BEET-able hummus, frozen fruit smoothies, Aztec grain salad with white beans, and Italian bean pasta salad with radishes. <\/p>\n \u201cStudents have begun to realize that they can have a say in designing their own lunch menu and are beginning to request new items [like balsamic dressing for their salad bar],\u201d says Taylor, who remembers one student giving a rating of \u20183 million\u2019 on a scale of one to five after trying a frozen fruit smoothie.<\/p>\n \u201cCreating healthy school food environments is a key factor in reversing the trends of chronic diet-related diseases that are plaguing our country,\u201d Taylor explains. Better health and nutrition also enhance classroom learning and academic success. Other signs of progress are reflected in changing attitudes toward fruits and vegetables, willingness to try new foods, reduction of cafeteria waste, participation in the school meal program, and support of local farmers.<\/p>\n