Serve cauliflower or lima beans with the baked chicken nuggets
or barbecued beef rib, and most of the day's vegetable offering
will end up in the trash - regrettably, too often alongside
unopened cartons of 1 percent or skim milk. Kids will, however,
eat squash - be it butternut, zucchini or yellow summer squash -
and love grapes, bananas and all kinds of melon. But if sweet
potatoes are to be part of the day's meal, better make them
sweet potato fries, or they'll end up with the lima beans and
cauliflower. Those are some of the lessons Cliff Still, food
services director for Groton Public Schools, has been learning
this year as he and his colleagues in districts across the
country are adapting to new school lunch nutrition regulations.
"The kids were already always eating green beans, corn and
broccoli," said Still, who oversees the ordering and preparation
of about 2,900 school lunches daily, about 32 percent of which
are free or reduced-price. "But now we have to run more
variety." Because of new federal r