By Jane Roberts - The Commercial Appeal -

Harold Wingood is out to turn a food desert into an oasis, build community gardening skills and save Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering six figures a year while doing it.

To start, Wingood, the MASE executive director, bid out the charter school's lunch contract.

"It's not fat or greasy," said a thoughtful Demetrius Witherspoon describing the baked chicken patty on whole wheat Friday during the seventh-grade lunch shift. "It's also less salty.

"I know about fat and grease because I've been eating it a long time," said the school lunch veteran.

Memphis City Schools rolled out whole wheat breads this year in its lunches and will offer a daily vegetarian selection at all 190 schools. The district will serve locally grown melons and other produce at least two or three times a month.

Even though whole milk and fried foods have been off the city school menus for years, Wingood said there were stories of "broccoli cooked beyond recognition and moldy hot pockets."

This summer, he ended MASE's food contract with the city schools, which trucked in food warmed up in other schools.

"It's part of our responsibility as a school to nourish the whole child, which means good nutrition, reasonable exercise and spiritual nurturing," said Wingood, who moved here from Boston last year to run MASE.

In several weeks, there will be fresh salads twice a week at MASE. Flatware will be a biodegradable spork. Ditto on the napkin, straw and nonbleached paper tray, provided by Preferred Meal Systems in Berkeley, Ill.

The school buys produce, milk and bread from local sources, including Turner Dairy and Flowers Baking.

By using MASE's kitchen staff and shaving per-serving costs, school comptroller Janis Jesse expects to save $80,000 to $100,000 in labor and food expenses.

"We are pretty confident we can save quite a bit, but we don't have enough experience to know exactly how much," she said.

With even the military getting serious about children's eating habits -- a study in April showed 27 percent of Americans ages 17-24 are too overweight to join the armed forces -- school lunches are generating heat.

Customers at Whole Foods on Poplar donated $2,500 in August to install a salad bar in a city school. Interest in the idea prompted the store to extend the deadline to mid-September, said Lisa Burke, marketing team leader.

"Our goal is get three salad bars."

Monday, the Department of Agriculture announced $2,000 incentives for schools that reach the highest level in its Healthier US School Challenge, which sets exercise and sodium intake limits. The White House wants to double participation in a year and add 1,000 schools a year for two more years.

The program, started in 2004, has no participants in Shelby County.

MASE intends to be in the running. In October, with the first of four $50,000 installments it's receiving over 30 months from Johnson & Johnson, it will begin health screenings and family nutrition programs, including raising vegetables in what is now an unused courtyard off the cafeteria.

"It's so critically important," Wingood says. "In some of the communities where our kids live, access to quality produce is not easy."

-- Jane Roberts: 529-2512