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Food Service Manager: Teens Need Breakfast: Week Honors School Workers

Posted on: Sunday, 12 March 2006, 15:00 CST

By Aubrey Cohen, The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham, Wash.

Mar. 12--Is your Bellingham High School student not getting a good breakfast at home? Don't worry, Princess Yum Yum is on the case.

Yum Yum, aka Mary Keim, is the school's food service manager and a 26-year veteran of Bellingham school cafeterias.

Bellingham High's breakfasts include things like low-fat milk, 100 percent juice, coffee cake with reduced-sugar, fruit, low-sugar cereal, egg-and-cheese muffins, and bagels filled with cheese.

Keim talked about the importance of breakfast last Thursday, during National School Breakfast Week. She also is among nearly 50,000 employees honored during Washington's Classified School Employee Week, which starts Monday.

Here's more:

Q: Why do schools serve breakfast?

A: "Most of these kids come to school and they haven't even eaten. ... They're not even awake in the mornings."

Q: How many students do you serve?

A: "We serve about 150 kids breakfast, and then we run our beverage area, where we do Bagelry bagels and juices. ... I order seven dozen bagels a day from the Bagelry. ... They do us a smaller bagel because we can't serve more than one bread serving at a time."

Q: Why is breakfast so important?

A: "It's been proven that if you eat breakfast that you're more able to sit through class, far more attentive, not so tired."

Q: Have you heard of National School Breakfast Week?

A: "Yeah. When I was in the middle-school level we used to do more. ... One year I set up a train with the different categories of breakfast."

Q: What do you consider the ideal breakfast for kids?

A: "First of all you should have a protein ... cereal, as long as it's reduced-sugar content ... a milk and a juice. I think juice is really important, but it's got to be 100 percent juice."

Q: Tell me about Princess Yum Yum.

A: "When I was at Kulshan (Middle School) and I was leaving, because I had been there a while and they kind of liked me, they put me on a cart and I had a princess hat and a wand and I was blowing bubbles and I had a shirt that said 'Princess Yum Yum.' They did it to me here at Bellingham High School about two years ago."

Q: What did you think of that?

A: "I was embarrassed, but I went along with it. I loved it and I have both of my Princess Yum Yum shirts. ... They're in my closet."

Reach Aubrey Cohen at aubrey.cohen@bellinghamherald.com or 715-2289.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham, Wash.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Source: The Bellingham Herald, Wash.

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