If you’re a parent who spends anytime volunteering in your children’s school cafeteria you may feel underwhelmed by the choices available to them. Seems like the pizza and hot dogs you had when you were growing up haven’t evolved much?Well, thanks to $1,000 from a 90K grant from the CDC, Seattle Public Schools recently had their first “Food Fair.” The Food Fair gathered about 150 students from two schools, John Hay Elementary and South Shore PK-8, at the John Stanford Center for Educational Excellence. The purpose: Let a sampling of kids taste-test potential new menu items, most created by the school’s Central Kitchen (others were based on recipes already offered in Vermont public schools, and at least one was made in partnership with Tom Douglas folks). Katie Busby, who consulted on the project and specializes in child obesity and health, said that the overall goal of adding these new items, which include things like Lentil Sloppy Joes and Butternut Squash Curry is to get kids to eat more fruits and vegetables and things like lentils and whole grains, as well as to diversify and try more interesting foods.While new Federal regulations require that grains served to students must be 51 percent whole grain and a vegetable must be served on the plate (whether or not a kid wants it), Busby says “Seattle was already years ahead of those requirements.” Other requirements, of course, cleave to USDA regulations around things like calorie and fat content.So what did the kids like best? While personal pan pizza and breaded chicken tenders scored highest, less surprising were the approval ratings for General Tso’s Chicken with Fried Rice (brown rice with peas and carrots in it) and Chicken Tikka Masala: 81% and 54% respectively. What does this tell us? According to Busby: “in general, adults think kids like bland foods, that spice is bad. It’s not surprising to me that the kids liked the spicy food. We’re happy with our result.”So how soon might we see these new items on children’s plates? As soon as this November they plan to roll out as many of the top winners as possible. But the work won’t be done then. “We don’t have a distribution method for getting the message out to parents and children that 150 kids tasted [these items] and more than half of them loved it.” And parents know, perhaps best of all, how hard it can be to get kids to try new things. So check in with your kids come November to see if they’re talking about new cafeteria favorites. The school board hopes to do another larger taste-test in the spring. This time around the chosen schools were selected because Busby knew people at them. It’s hard, she says, to get schools to commit to things – especially when it involves finding transportation to get kids from one place to another. Hopefully, the efforts made by these two schools will have a lasting impact on all Seattle school menus.