Curious what your school is serving for lunch? There's an app for that

Whether your child has a peanut allergy or an insatiable sweet tooth, your school could now be using an app to help them make the right choice at lunchtime.

The Indian River School District, which oversees 15 schools in Sussex County, recently announced its adoption of a mobile app program that allows students, parents and school employees to get quick nutrition facts on school meals. Proponents hope the app will help students make healthier and safer meal choices.

App users can find daily lunch and breakfast options, complete with nutrient information such as calories and sodium per serving. Users can also use it to pay for meals electronically and know when their balance is running low.

“It’s just a way to integrate parents,” said Indian River School District Nutrition Services Supervisor Clifton Toomey. “I’m sure they’re involved in their education. Their meals and their eating habits are important as well.”

Indian River is not the first district in the area to adopt the app, which has been around for a few years and is used by schools across the country as part of a larger program called School Nutrition and Fitness that helps schools provide nutrition information to students and parents. Seventeen of Delaware’s 19 school districts, as well as four Maryland school districts, are part of the hundreds of school districts nationwide that use the program, according to a School Nutrition and Fitness representative.

“All age groups are definitely going to benefit from seeing the information behind what they’re eating,” said Elise Denny, a registered dietitian who works with Indian River School District. “Everything we have on our menu is definitely healthier than what you get at McDonald’s. But there are some better choices that you can make throughout the options.”

The app also helps children with food allergies know what to avoid in the cafeteria. “The biggest help we’ve seen is that we can identify allergens,” said Laurel School District Nutrition Director Julie Gibbons, whose district has used the program since 2015.

It alerts users when a breakfast burrito, for example, contains corn, wheat and dairy. The app can also flag any allergen-containing food being served that day if the user requests it. A parent with a lactose intolerant child could simply put "dairy" as a restricted food, allowing the app to cross out all dairy products on the school menu.

Toomey said that before the program, nurses helping students with diabetes had to comb through spreadsheets for crucial nutrient information.

“Now, they can check the blood glucose and refer to the menu on the app,” he said.

Some Delaware school districts that have adopted the program do not use the app, which is optional. “I don’t see that many are advertising the app,” said Denny, who encourages other districts to use it.

On top of the app, the program offers other features like digital menu boards for cafeterias and a nutrition website. Denny said the site targets a larger demographic than the app.

“Not everybody’s going to use the app on their phone,” she said.

Up until this year, Indian River parents and students had to refer to a monthly calendar online or wait for a physical copy in the mail if they wanted nutrition facts or daily menus.

“It was a lot more difficult to get to,” said Toomey. “Now, you can pretty much do it in real time.”

Younger students are expected to use the app outside of school, though some high schools allow students to use phones during lunch. School officials hope students will use the app for nutrient information.

“Kids these days live on their phones,” Toomey said.

The app also lets students rate their meals, which school officials hope will help cafeterias know what they are craving.

“We do try to gauge by interacting with the students in person,” said Denny. “But having the 15 different schools, it’s hard for us to all be out at the same time and the same place. We’re hoping that the rating system will provide even further feedback outside of just what was produced that day. We can see, even if they took it, did they actually like it?”

Elementary and middle schools in the district can have up to eight meal options a day while high schools can have up to 12. But Denny said each school serves food based on its students, whose preferences can vary across the district.

“One school loves fish tacos. The other school doesn’t,” she said.

Denny also hopes the program will eventually encourage more students to eat school meals regardless of income level. If more kids are eating what the school serves for lunch, students who qualify for free or reduced meals could feel less self-conscious when eating school meals. The free and reduced lunch program is anonymous.

Over 75 percent of Indian River School District students already eat what is served at the cafeteria, according to Toomey.

“We still want to capture as many children as we can to come to the lunch line,” he said. “If this app could get five extra students per school, any increase would be great.”