Victoria Vogler | Staff Writer

For the first time in 15 years, the U.S Department of Agriculture has released new school lunch guidelines. These guidelines have set out to decrease the growing obesity rate in children, and provide heather lunches to students who buy food at school.

Johnson’s cafeteria manager, Sylvia Bermea, said NEISD started the healthier movement years ago.

“We pretty much started before this, when does it start, a couple days? We started years ago. We got rid of all the fryers in the kitchen, we don’t fry with grease. We got rid of candies we used to sell, Little Debbie cakes ands stuff like that,” Bermea said.

USDA’s guidelines want to reduce salty, calorie filled food, and replace it with whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables. Our cafeteria has served heathy food since 2008, but we’re not the only ones.

“The whole district, and pretty much statewide already, [have served healthier food],” Bermea said.

While any school’s menus might change now that the new guidelines have been released, NEISD schools will pretty much stay the same.

“Nothing major [will change], because pretty much everything is in place, according to the guidelines and all that,” Bermea said.

North East was just one step ahead, according to Bermea, “We started way before we knew this was coming.”

To find more information, visit NEISD’s webpage.

“All of our information is online, if parents want to go look. On the NEISD website, we have nutrition information as well as a wellness program,” Bermea said.