[orchestral theme music] Michigan State College presents another in the Cooperative Extension Series. And now we take you to the Cooperative Extension Office where Clint Ballard is waiting to tell us about today's program. [Clint Ballard] How do you do, friends? And welcome to another Michigan State College Extension Service program. As these programs are introduced from day to day, you've often heard us make this comment: It's our purpose to bring you useful, timely, and unbiased information. Now just how successful we are in that we aren't always sure. We'd appreciate your suggestions from time to time as to subject matter and as to techniques in presenting this material. Perhaps if you don't want to write us here in the Extension Service, you could talk with your county agricultural agents, your home demonstration agents, or your club agents and they would relay the information on to us because we have just one purpose in mind and that is to be of service to you. For our program today We're going to take you to the School of Home Economics, the partner of Institutional Administration, where Katherine Hart will discuss preparing the packed lunch. [Katherine Hart] Hello, here we are in front of the same old problem of packing a lunch. Now if you had been in the commercial food service business as long as I have been - and that's been most of my life - one of the first things that you do is start in figuring out a menu pattern. Now what would you do that for? Well in business you figure it out first of all to please your customers and they really are pretty important. Then you set up menu patterns to meet nutritional requirements. Here you run into requirements as far as hospitals are concerned and certain types of institutions. And then there's the business of making money and that is always a matter of consideration. So, in figuring your packed lunch, why don't you pattern it after the lunch that's been set up by the federal government for the school lunches throughout the country? Now what do you know about the school lunch program in the United States? Probably not too much. The year was 1894 and the city was Boston where the first lunch was served. These school lunches were called penny lunches probably because the domestic science teacher prepared them with the help of her students and they charged one cent for every dish, whether it was a ham sandwich or a glass of milk. Now from this original beginning the movement grew very slowly. In some areas that simply meant preparing one hot main dish to supplement the packed lunch brought from home. Then along came 1946 and the whole school lunch movement was given a terrific shot in the arm by the School Lunch Act. This particular act had two essential provisions. First, that the United States Department of Agriculture would supply the lunch system the surplus commodities - dried eggs and dried milk, ham ham, frozen turkeys. Second, that for each school that met the requirements set up by a certain type of menu there would be a cash reimbursement for each meal. Now you may ask why is the federal government interested in nutrition of children? Don't we have more food than any country in the world? Probably our nutrition should be the best. You might be interested in a couple of studies that have recently been made. In New York City a few years ago this particular study covered 2,000 children. What did they find out? That the food that was consumed did not meet standard dietary requirements for 78 percent of the boys and 70 percent of the girls. Then there was another study made in new on the west coast largely in California. This included 14,000 students that ranged in age from kindergarten on up through 12th grade. It was found that only 37% of these students had what you might call adequate diets. The other students' diets ranged from fair down to really very poor. Now, the type A meal is set to furnish a third to a half of the daily nutritional requirements of the students. So I repeat again, why don't you pattern your packed lunch for your boys and girls as against the standard menu pattern set up by the federal government? And we keep talking about this type A menu pattern. What do you mean by the type A menu pattern? We'll take a look at it. Here we have your pattern for your type A lunch. First of all, a half a pint of milk. Then there's two ounces of lean meat, poultry, fish, or one egg. Now in your school cafeteria this is met by a casserole dish or perhaps some beef stew or maybe a meat pie. Then you have, which is very important, three quarters of a cup of vegetable and or fruit. In your school cafeteria the vegetable is served hot and buttered or maybe raw in a salad. You may have your fruit either fresh or canned in a salad or else perhaps you could have it in apple crisper, cherry cobbler. Then you have one portion of bread and two teaspoons of butter. Essentially you see this menu pattern is really fairly simple, fairly easy to handle and will pack up very well. Let's take a look at this time at some of the meals some of a couple of lunches that we have prepared to show you that meets these particular specifications. First of all I might say in planning your packed lunch, one of the reasons for monotony - and dreadful monotony - in packed lunches is the fact that perhaps someone figures out that Johnny needs the lunch about 10 minutes before he's going to depart for school. A few sandwiches are whipped together, maybe a cookie and a little fruit tossed in a sack and then the results are hope may be the best. Try to plan your luncheon meal that you're sending out as a total part of your daily food picture and your weekly food menus. Try to plan them a week in advance. Now essentially sandwiches are the starting point for [stuttering] for planning any packed lunch, and you may be caught in the same predicament that we are in a commercial restaurant or soda bar luncheonette situation. Always a sandwich is most desirable is most appetizing if it's made up to order. Once in a while you're caught with a heavy volume of business or too much to do that it's necessary to go ahead and prepare sandwiches ahead. So on these lunches we have used different types of techniques for preparation to take care of different situations. The first lunch that we have lined up here on this tray - these sandwiches were prepared about an hour ago. One thing remember by all means don't let your sandwiches stand more than four hours at room temperature. You may run into difficulty with staphylococci infection if you do. Now for these particular sandwiches we have a sliced cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread and then we have a deviled meat sandwich that's made up very easily and these are wrapped in sandwich bags. Now for the next lunch these sandwiches were prepared last evening and then refrigerated. If you're going to do that they should not be refrigerated more than 24 hours or you run into difficulty there. Don't use mayonnaise on sandwiches that stand like this for the simple reason that it will soak into the bread. Here we have a ground ham and pickle relish sandwich and here we have an apricot and nut bread with a cream cheese filling. Now our third lunch we have set up with frozen sandwiches - one advantage of your frozen sandwich you may freeze it and hold it for a week in the freezing compartment of your refrigerator or else in your deep freeze unit, you can take and hold it for a month or better. The fillings that freeze the best are sliced meat, sliced cheese, and peanut butter, or perhaps fish. Don't use mayonnaise that separates, and for heaven's sake, don't use lettuce and tomatoes because they'll completely disintegrate. Here we have a sliced beef sandwich with some mustard butter that was made by creaming butter with two teaspoons of mustard for a quarter of a cup of butter. And then we have a peanut butter sandwich on some white bread. An advantage of these frozen sandwiches is during hot weather if you take and pack them in your lunch it takes about an hour to defrost them they'll keep the rest of the lunch items nice and crisp. Now we have met the protein requirement and the bread and the butter requirement let's see what we've done for the fruit and the vegetable. On the first lunch we have some applesauce in a paper container that can be easily packed and destroyed and some celery sticks. On the second lunch we have a lettuce wedge and some peaches in syrup, and on the third lunch we have carrot sticks that have been wrapped in cellophane or wax paper and then we have a fruit cup with some diced orange in it. To complete the picture we have a half a pint of milk for each one of the lunches and last but not least which is one of the things that most children like we've included a sweet as the English call it; fruit bars on the first the first lunch, chocolate cupcakes on the second lunch, and lastly some sugar cookies on the third lunch. You need to remember of course due to the age and the capacity of the child that you may have to add more sandwiches than we have suggested here and that perhaps you may need to vary the volume of food that you send along. Now this is really a very simple menu pattern; it's easy to pack. And packing it there are a few reminders: pack your heavy items at the bottom, they'll slip in very easily. Try to pack them in the sequence that your son or daughter is going to eat them, then also put in plenty of napkins, put in plenty of straws and a spoon. These are set up with all disposable items so that they do not need to be taken home, anything washed. Then as a last reminder take a look to see that you have everything carefully packed, that it will carry well, and close up your lunch box. [Clint Ballard] We want to thank Katherine Hart for her demonstration and discussion of preparing the packed lunch. Apparently the same principles apply as to whether you're in business or whether you're just trying to please a junior or dad who carries his lunch to school. Our time is running out. However, we do want to invite you to be with us daily, Monday through Friday, same time in the same station. And now for the Extension Service of Michigan State College, we bid you goodbye. [orchestral theme music] This has been another in the Cooperative Extension Series. Today's program has been brought to you by the School of Home Economics and arranged by the Department of Institutional Administration. Our guest for today was Katherine Hart. Join us Monday at this very same time when the School of Agriculture begins another week of telecast. This has been a video recording of Michigan State College Television.