Camp Food
Aug 15, 2011
I’m working volunteering on a pretty big project right now: Helping make summer camp food more nutritious.
This is not just any summer camp, mind you. It’s a place that’s incredibly dear to me. It’s impossible to put into just a few words how meaningful and special this place is, but I’ll say this: I did my growing up here.ย It’s my second home.
Camp Emerald Bay is a Boy Scout Camp on Santa Catalina Island, about 30 miles off the coast of Los Angeles. The camp serves over 10,000 youth every year — about half of whom are Boy Scouts who come during the summer for a week.
Although it’s not all that far, it’s a world away from “The Mainland.” It’s a different way of life out here. When I visit, everything slows down for me a little, and the background noise just falls away. Last night, for example, I spent an hour simply watching a couple of pelicans gliding around the bay and crashing into the emerald-green water to scoop up their dinners.
I spent the summer of 1991 working here (my, how quickly those twenty years have passed!), and returned every summer for the rest of that decade. ย I was the chairman of the Alumni association for the past six years, and nowadays I try to get out to the island at least one week every summer to volunteer and breathe in the eucalyptus-scented ocean air. I’m writing this post from a cabin that overlooks the bay, while listening to the gentle surf breaking on the beach and the playful shouts of Scouts frolicking in the water.
One of the core tenants of Scouting is physical fitness. ย The Scouting program truly excels at getting boys away from their computers and video games and into the great outdoors. ย Here at Emerald Bay, campers go kayaking, canoeing, sailing, rowing, swimming, SCUBA diving, mountain biking, hiking… basically, when the Scouts come out to camp for a week, they hardly ever stop moving.
The other half of the “physical fitness equation,” of course, is nutrition. Without the right fuel for your body, you can’t perform physical activities to your best; indeed, true physical fitness comes from a combination of both diet and exercise.
Early last year I started discussions with the camp management (who also happen to be some of my closest personal friends), with the goal of making the food more nutritious, fresher, and more healthful.
I had originally figured that getting management to “buy in” to the concept would be the hardest part. Turns out, that was the easiest — everyone quickly and enthusiastically jumped on board. The logistic challenges are where the real work begins.
During one Friday at camp last summer (over an ironic lunch of corn dogs, nachos, and applesauce), we convened an ad-hoc committee to write our “vision statement” for the food and nutrition at Emerald Bay. We whittled our vision down to one, succinct sentence:
Camp Emerald Bay is a leader in providing nutrition education and healthful, appealing food.
There are three core concepts in this vision:
First, that we’re a leader. We’re thinking bigger than just our own camp. This is one of the largest, most popular Scout camps in the country (I did mention that this place is awesome, right?). We’ve been operating since 1925, and have broken ground in many areas of Scouting (we created the Buddy System, for example, to help keep kids safe in the water). Our goal is to be so good at what we’re doing out here that the rest of the Scout camps in the country will follow suit. If we can do it on a desert island, we can do it anywhere.
Second, we’re not just focusing on the food we serve. We’re focusing on nutrition education. This isn’t going to become “fat camp” (ugh, what an awful phrase) — but without at least some nutrition information and positive messaging incorporated into our program (marketing!), our customers won’t understand what we’re doing, and we won’t have have a lasting impact.
Third, if the food doesn’t taste good, nobody’s going to eat it. Yes, this is obvious, but we need to ensure that our campers and staff are happy with both the taste and quality of the food.
This isn’t going to be easy, of course, but we all believe it’s totally doable.
The logistics are pretty intense:
We’re on an island.
We get our food delivered once a week.
We have a kitchen that was originally designed to serve around 300 people at at time. We now serve up to 850 meals at once, handing everyone a plate of food within about 30 minutes (we do leave plenty of time to eat and socialize — but we do our best to get everyone through the serving line as quickly as possible).
We have limited number of staff (hiring more people also means we have to house and feed them, which requires more money and more cabins). Also, everyone in camp management is already incredibly busy, of course, so there’s no full-time staff member who’s responsible for leading the charge and helping turn our goals into reality.
We have to keep our customers happy. If they don’t like the food, we’re not going to get anywhere. Camp is also supposed to be a fun, wonderful time, right? I certainly don’t want us to take that away; it’ll completely defeat the point of all of this!
Oh, and did I mention that there’s no extra room in the budget?
This summer, we’ve already started improving in small, but significant, ways. The wonderful folks at Attune Foods have been providing their Uncle Sam cereals to us at the same cost as the other, sugary cereals we offer — so at least we now have an additional, healthful breakfast option every morning. We’re also talking with Nature’s Pathย and Bob’s Red Mill about providing some of their products. We already have two salad bars, and have just ordered two more because they’e so popular. We’ve also increased the price of candy in the Trading Post, which has helped reduced the amount of candy being consumed.
So, where do we go next? ย By the end of this week, I will have crafted a first draft of our nutrition policy statement. In it, I plan to outline our specific goals for the program, and how we want our meals to start looking. I’m going to be using the newย My Plate icon as our touchstone. If we can start getting the food on our plates to be more aligned with that icon, we’ll be well on our way.
—
Do you have any experience in improving school or camp food? Are you a health-minded food manufacturer who would be interested in getting involved and helping out? Please leave a comment or email me!
For me, the frustrating part of meal planning, is having someone tell me that it is not a good idea because their daughter doesn’t like that kind of food. Ugh! That is frustrating!
I commend what you are doing here. I have grown up at a camp in Iowa, The Des Moines Y Camp in Boone, IA. I’ve met amazing people here and now that I’ve graduated from ISU after focusing my studies on dietetics I have come to realize that the kids may not notice a week with these foods but the staff that offer their time show signs. I have been working toward a proposal for my camp as well to increase the nutritional value and options available at camp. I applaud what you are doing and can only hope I come up close.
Thanks, Christa! Sounds like you’re doing some really good work, too. Please keep us posted! ๐
Thanks, everyone, for the wonderful and supportive comments so far. (Sorry I haven’t had a chance to reply to all individually… I’ve been swamped!).
I’ll be sure to post again once we’ve made some more progress!