“There’s no
reason children ever need to eat processed food in school,” he says.
Nationwide,
31 million children receive meals in school. In our readership region, more
than 23,000 children — about 1/3 of school-aged kids— receive school lunches,
according to the New York State Council on Children and Families.
While new school
lunch nutritional requirements were put in place in 2012 by the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, few schools have the budget or ability to deliver food that
meets the new standards.
That’s where
Fattore’s company,
Cognitive Cuisine, an innovative new Hudson Valley food service
company, comes in.
All of Cognitive Cuisine’s food is made daily from
scratch, even the crispy chicken tenders.
“As a
teacher, I saw lethargic, unsatisfied kids coming back to my classroom unable
to concentrate and still hungry,” says Fattore, who taught middle school
English in Highland before launching his company. “I’d talk to them about what
they ate and I found that they were eating bags of chips, ice cream and other
snacks from the vending machine because they hated the so-called ‘hockey-puck’
burgers and ‘cardboard’ grilled cheeses on offer in the cafeteria.”
Fattore, who
grew up in the restaurant business and ran a deli with his brother on Long Island
before going into teaching full-time, saw an opportunity to use his background
in education and food to fill a hole in the market.
“I’ve
watched my own daughters (Tikli, 11, and Annie, 4) flourish in every way with
the right nutrition, and I soon saw that the kids who weren’t getting proper
food didn’t perform as well in the classroom,” he says.
He knew he
could do better, creating healthy, better-tasting, 100% made-from-scratch hot
food for lunch — food that kids would actually enjoy without breaking the
notoriously tight school food budgets.
“Many schools believe it is not possible to
cook healthy meals from scratch for school cafeterias without losing money, but
we’ve proven that it can be done,” Fattore says.
Izzy Fattore, right, and chef Robert Morano, a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, prepare food in Cognitive Cuisine's kitchen — an old elementary school cafeteria.
Cognitive Cuisine was launched in 2013 out of the shuttered Hyde Park Elementary School
cafeteria. Every meal is created daily to order by culinary chef Robert Morano and delivered to
participating schools and daycares in the Hudson Valley.
“Parents can
go to our website and see all of our meal options with nutritional and allergy
guidelines,” Fattore explains. “They can sign up for one meal on a crazy busy
day, or order daily meals for their kids.”
Fattore operates
on a shoestring budget with one chef, a prep cook, one delivery driver and a
freelance nutritionist. He is able to keep costs competitive, while still
maintaining the quality he says he feels Hudson Valley children deserve.
“We can meet schools’ budget constraints
because we don’t have the overhead they would have with a full-time kitchen
staff, equipment and pricey packaged foods. We also deliver fresh food daily. A
lot of school cafeterias are just serving processed food that’s re-heated.”
Cognitive Cuisine recently did a trial lunch run at San Miguel Academy of Newburgh, a
middle school with 65 students. Fattore says the feedback has been great, and
that he personally served many of the children the chicken stirfry and veggie
macaroni and cheese the company prepared.
To find out if
your school is participating in the program (schools need to grant permission
for deliveries, a simple process that parents can generally accomplish online, according
to Mr. Fattore), visit
cognitivecuisine.com.
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