Lincoln Academy Food Service Director “Big Dave” Page is leading a two-year-old transition to a healthier, more nutritious dining experience at the private Newcastle high school.
Page’s arrival coincided with the beginning of the high school’s participation in the National School Lunch Program.
The school’s participation qualifies it to receive reimbursement from the federal government for providing free and reduced meals.
To qualify for the funding, however, the school must abide by program standards – removing candy bars and soda from the Lincoln Academy vending machines, for example.
The majority of the changes at the dining commons, however, represent the work of Page, not a Washington, D.C. bureaucrat.
Page removed the frialators and added a salad bar – a tough sell at first, although it’s growing in popularity. His kitchen uses wheat bread, hamburger rolls and sub rolls.
He buys fresh, 90 percent lean hamburger from Yellowfront Grocery and serves a three-ounce cheeseburger with reduced fat cheese.
“In our day, we got the frozen hockey pucks,” Page said. “It’s not perfect, but it’s a heck of a lot better than it used to be.”
The list of reforms includes the replacement of pints of milk with half-pints of high-fructose corn syrup-free milk and the substitution of one-ounce chocolate chip cookies for three-ounce cookies.
The kitchen prepares meals from scratch whenever practical, scrapping instant mashed potatoes and pre-made soups.
A guest chef program has seen John Reny, a former president of the Board of Trustees; prepare Easter dinner and Assistant Head of School Andy Mullin make red beans and rice for Mardi Gras.
The school participates in Harvest Lunch week, five days of meals made almost exclusively with ingredients from local farms.
The Page plan, in addition to promoting healthier choices and ridding the menu of its most egregious dietary offenders, contains a third component – increasing participation.
A biometric thumb scan system – a 2010 addition – lends near-total anonymity to recipients of free and reduced lunch, doubling participation in just one year.
A student places his or her thumb on a scanner and the system calls up the student’s account. No one – including the cashier – knows whether the student receives a free or pre-paid meal.
Page estimates 30 percent of Lincoln Academy students qualify for free breakfast and lunch, with more eligible for reduced price ($0.40) meals.
If a student’s family receives food stamps, they automatically qualify for free meals, no application necessary. The state provides the school with a list of food stamp recipients and Page enters the information into his computer. The next time a student checks in for a meal, there’s no charge.
The changes help remove “the sting and the stigma” of receiving free meals, Page said. A graduate of Lincoln Academy, he remembers the days of large identification cards for free lunch.
“In this economy, so many people are struggling,” Page said. “It’s just the way it is these days.”
For many students, the meals the school provides might be the only meals – certainly the only nutritious, balanced meals – the students eat all day.
Despite a significant drop in enrollment going into the current academic year, the dining commons serves about 15 percent more meals, Page said.
The changes at Lincoln Academy and other schools across the nation stem from a need to stem the obesity epidemic, an issue Page is intimately familiar with.
“I was fat my whole life,” Page said. His mother started calling him Big Dave at the age of six. By his early 40s, he weighed 398 pounds. He tried weight loss programs, but “every time I lost it I’d put on more,” he said.
“I had to do something,” Page said. “My father died of a heart attack at 52.” Without a big change, “I was a dead man,” he said.
At the age of 43, Page opted for gastric bypass surgery – not a path he recommends, but “for me, it was the last resort,” he said.
Page suffered severe complications from the surgery, developing a painful ulcer and spending nearly a year in and out of Maine Medical Center. Still, “if I had to do it again, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” he said.
Today, at 55, Big Dave still bears the moniker, but, like the milk cartons in his dining commons cooler, he’s half-size at about 240 pounds.
On Sept. 27, Joel Fuhrman, MD, a bestselling author on the subject of nutrition visited Lincoln Academy. During his visit Fuhrman compared McDonalds unfavorably to purveyors of crack cocaine and targeted parents and food service workers, too.
“Basically, [he] said, ‘You’re killing these kids,'” Page said. “I really take exception to that.”
At the next weekly assembly, Page addressed the entire student population. He talked about the changes in the dining commons and the vending machines and countered the Fuhrman’s rhetoric with a common sense approach. Instead of a Big Mac and fries, order a salad, he suggested.
The students and faculty gave him a standing ovation. “It’s been very heartwarming,” Page said. “They appreciate what I do.”
Lincoln Academy Head of School Jay Pinkerton, too, is a fan of Page’s work. Students, especially those who take advantage of breakfast, benefit from a healthier diet, he said.
Pinkerton spoke with The Lincoln County News Oct. 5, while Page was busy preparing for one of his occasional cookouts – firing up a large, propane grill to cook grilled chicken breast sandwiches with lettuce, tomato and homemade cole slaw.
The school is “trying to offer out students a healthier meal at an affordable price,” Pinkerton said.
Page, a former president of the Lincoln Academy Board of Trustees, stepped down from the position in 2009 in favor of his current post. Today, the former store owner jokes that he went from being president of the board to “lunch lady” in a matter of hours.
His next goal is to be the first high school in Maine to win a HealthierUS School Challenge award.
A state inspector recently told Page “you’re already doing 95 percent of it here, now,” he said.
“You really have to toe the line and be serious about serving healthier food,” Page said.
