It's lunchtime. A food service worker at Woodson Elementary School in Sunnyside calls Betti Wiggins over. A hip-height first-grader slides her tray down the line. Most of her peers stopped in front of a pile of cheeseburgers and placed their orders, but the girl pushed her Styrofoam tray past the warmer and toward the lettuce.

"Someone's ordering a salad!," the worker tells Wiggins.

After the worker tops the fresh greens with carrots, chicken and cheese, the girl sits at a cafeteria bench, her colorful fare standing out among the brown burger buns.

Wiggins, now in her second year as the Officer of Nutrition Services for the Houston Independent School District, is delighted by this. She jokes that she wishes she'd worn her go-to green polo, which is embroidered with the words, "GOOD FOOD."

Those eight letters have long been her mission. Beyond feeding HISD's 215,000 hungry students three times a day, every day, she hopes to teach them how and why to choose the fresh, healthy food that too many Americans can't and don't get enough of. "My job is to make sure I'm feeding [students] in such a way to support academic achievement and take not one dollar out of the classroom," Wiggins said. "Sometimes, I think I'm more of a magician."

A 'visionary'

She's been working her magic in schools for more than two decades. "She has worked tirelessly to ensure that kids in her district have access to healthy meals," said Crystal FitzSimons, a program director at the Food Research and Action Center, based in Washington, D.C., which advocates for policies to eliminate childhood hunger and promote nutrition. In 2018, Time included Wiggins alongside Bill and Melinda Gates and Dr. Atul Gawande on a list of 50 people transforming health care.

It's easy to see why. Wiggins was raised on a farm in Michigan, where her mother grew crops that taught her the value of fresh food. Later, at Wayne State University in Detroit, she became the first black woman to serve as student government president. A natural leader, she went on to work in food service management for Marriott before moving to public schools. She made her reputation in Detroit with Detroit Public Schools, where she created dozens of school gardens and led a charge to eliminate what she calls "carnival food" from cafeterias.

"One of the first things we did was turn the deep fryers off," Wiggins said in an interview with Civil Eats. Then, she nixed sugary drinks and processed hot dogs and introduced "meatless Mondays." She also took students on tours of farms to help them understand the path food takes to the table.

In the summer of 2017, Wiggins – often described as a "food rebel" and "visionary" – brought all this experience to Houston and HISD, one of the largest school districts in the country. "I'm a very lucky lunch lady," she said. "This has been the greatest opportunity I've had in my career in terms of continuing my work on a larger and more diverse scale."

Two months into her new position, though, Hurricane Harvey hit, damaging schools, displacing families and delaying classes. Wiggins and her team ran feeding shelters in schools across the city. She instructed helpers to "open up the freezers" and serve whatever was on hand. Her funds were limited, so she successfully petitioned for more than $200,000 in food assistance grants. For five days, she ran nine feeding sites, serving three meals a day — 90,000 meals in total.

Soon after, Wiggins and HISD decided to provide three free meals a day for the rest of the 2017-2018 school year.

But then she got right down to it. Her next move was to implement salad bars in HISD's 159 elementary schools. Then, she started promoting the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, a USDA service, where students are given fresh produce and an accompanying nutrition lesson daily. She also ensured that all HISD schools qualified through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), another USDA service, to continue to be able to serve free breakfast, lunch and dinner, regardless of a student's family income.

Now, in her second year, she's developing a food literacy program, school gardens and practice kitchens, creating spaces where students can learn that there's more to food than a box or bag. She's pushing for the development of an agriscience program that would complement existing culinary education programs like the one at Milby High School, where student chefs prepare lunches of zucchini noodles topped with chicken and shaved parmesan as an alternative to chicken wings.

Difficult mission

Through all these programs, just as she did in Detroit, she's encouraging students to think critically about what they eat. "We want our children to have more than a consumer relationship with their food," she said.

That means giving them opportunities to taste a variety of foods prepared and seasoned in ways that represent Houston's diverse culinary cultures. And it means empowering them to make better choices. Munching on jicama sticks and peaches during the day could entice them to pick something besides Flamin' Hot Cheetos later.

"Modeling good food habits is how we're going to teach our kids," she said.

And that's important, because Houston doesn't always model those same good habits. Though the city can claim many James Beard Award winners and restaurants that receive rave reviews in national magazines, food insecurity remains a persistent problem and processed food dominates many of our diets, said Daphne Hernandez, a health researcher at the University of Houston. Millions of families, both in Houston and throughout the U.S., are simply unable to access good food. Instead, they have to opt for the food they can afford, laden with the preservatives and chemicals that leave them vulnerable to ongoing health issues. In Harris County, 23.5 percent of children are food insecure, putting them at a higher risk of diet-related diseases like diabetes and obesity.

"If you're on a limited budget, you're more likely to buy processed foods, which means foods higher in fat, sugar and salt," Hernandez said, "and less likely to buy vegetables, which do not last as long and are more expensive."

Time is money, too. Not only are fresh foods more expensive, they take longer to prepare. That extra time can be difficult for working parents, especially single parents and those with multiple jobs, to spare.

Meanwhile, many HISD students live in neighborhoods lacking stores that even sell fresh foods — the Chronicle reported in 2015 that 500,000 Houstonians are in food deserts. Part of Wiggins's mission, then, is simply keeping hunger out of the classroom.

Hernandez commended her and HISD, but she acknowledged that it's impossible for administrators like Wiggins to provide an ideal situation. Not only do they have to move hundreds of students in and out of a cafeteria in a small window of time, they are trying to introduce spinach, banana peppers and pinto beans to children who have grown up eating nachos and chicken fingers while surrounded by advertisements designed to be irresistible. And when's the last time you saw a commercial for cauliflower or drove past a glowing neon sign for a farmers market?

What sells?

After two decades of this, Wiggins has become a well-intended pragmatist. "You can't demonize a cheeseburger," she said, adding that the ones she serves are all beef and come with low-fat cheese on a whole-wheat bun. Everything she sells in her schools, she said, meets USDA Dietary Guidelines.

But everyone isn't happy with everything she sells. In 2018, Wiggins and HISD came under fire about an $8 million deal inked with Domino's. Though Domino's said it would be selling students so-called "Smart Slices," prepared with altered ingredients that have less fat and sodium than the pizza you would have delivered to your house, many parents weren't pleased. Not only would students see even more of the Domino's logo, receiving what Houston-based writer Bettina Elias Siegel criticized as an "implicit message that branded fast food and junk food are a normal part of one's daily or weekly diet," they would be presented with another obstacle to making the healthier choice.

Wiggins told Siegel, who had asked her to explain the deal, "I still run a business."

The bulk of Wiggins's $139 million budget, which exists outside the general HISD budget, comes from government grants that reimburse nutrition services for most of the school meals. But she also has to find ways to pay for supplies, overhead and wages for 2,300 employees. FitzSimons explained that the success of a nutrition program hinges on participation and a director's ability to overcome limited funding.

In the end, Wiggins needs HISD students to buy in. If her food doesn't sell, she can't continue offering three free meals a day through CEP. "If we don't have the right amount of participation, we can't buy good nutrition," she said.

For now, the pizza is here to stay.

Facing the reality of a tight budget and other challenges, from lingering social inequality to advertising even to the sometimes picky tastes of children, Wiggins remains optimistic. When she talks of her plans for Houston's future, she speaks with the same delight she showed when a child passed up a cheeseburger for a salad.

If this visionary has her way, the ones she is entrusted to serve will keep making that choice, magical as it might seem.

Cat Modlin-Jackson is a freelance writer. She previously wrote about the challenges with urban farming in Houston.

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