SOUND BITES Amos House takes the ick out of school lunch BY DAVID ORTIZ

When Community Preparatory School went searching this summer for a new food service provider that would serve healthier and tastier lunchroom meals, it settled on an unlikely vendor: Amos House, the agency that runs Providence’s largest soup kitchen.

Community Prep’s move to more wholesome meals puts it in step with an international trend in elementary education, sparked by growing awareness about childhood obesity, and backed by research suggesting that children who eat a healthy lunch fight less and concentrate more. "Everybody is looking at what children are eating, and we’re a part of that," says Ellen O’Hara, Community Prep’s social worker, who led the school’s search for a new food service vendor.

O’Hara says she started mulling the idea two years ago, after the student senate — which she advises — made addressing "the lunch problem" its top priority. A subsequent survey of all students revealed widespread dissatisfaction with the school’s institutional food service vendor. "They talked about wanting more fresh vegetables a lot," O’Hara recalls. "We decided to look for food that was prepared in a healthy way, getting away from food where you wouldn’t know how it was prepared."

The search ended when O’Hara found Amos House Works, a year-old micro-business that employs graduates of Amos House’s 12-week job training program in the food service industry. Most who graduate from the program have recently experienced homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, or incarceration.

The business currently employs seven full-time workers, who earn from $8.50 to $15 per hour making breakfasts, lunches, and snacks for Community Prep, Goodwill Industries, and Crossroads Rhode Island in Providence, and the International Charter School and Blackstone Academy in Pawtucket.

Amos House Works recently moved its operation into a larger kitchen at Crossroads Rhode Island on Broad Street, and is discussing becoming the food service vendor for a handful more schools next fall, says Eileen Hayes, Amos House’s executive director.

Much of what Amos House Works offers is typical lunchroom fare — pizza, chicken nuggets, tacos — but the menus adhere to standards that include no deep frying and preparing only meats that are 90-percent fat-free. Fresh fruits and vegetables are served with every meal, and Amos House Works would like to eventually receive its produce from local farms, perhaps through an agreement with Southside Community Land Trust, Hayes says.

The food program is still a work in progress, for both Amos House Works and the schools. Recently, when Amos House Works served pasta primavera in the schools, it was mostly ignored except in one school where students were earlier urged to give it a try.