Given the choice for lunch, most children would choose:

A. M&Ms and Diet Coke.

B. Meatloaf and steamed carrots.

Duh. That's a no-brainer, says Houston seventh-grader, Jackson Hime, whose mother recently resorted to setting up a school-cafeteria tab so that he couldn't use his lunch money on vending-machine soda and candy.

While parents like Jackson's might not even know the choice exists, let alone approve of it, many schools inadvertently make option "A" a very real choice. Junk food is effectively a part of school menus. The vast majority of public schools – elementary to high school – have vending machines filled with soft drinks and sweets. School stores sell plenty of potato chips and popsicles. And even school cafeterias offer greasy fries and doughnuts.

With childhood obesity rates setting records nationwide – and health experts concerned that this is a health-care crisis in the making – states are taking aim at schools that peddle junk food to students:

• Texas, for instance, is the latest state to adopt the US Department of Agriculture regulations for the sale of "foods of minimal nutritional value," such as sodas, gum, hard candy, and popsicles. These foods cannot be sold during lunch hour or in school cafeterias. Candy bars, potato chips, and french fries don't fall under the ban because they contain some nutritional value.

• After legislation banning junk food in Kentucky schools failed to pass, the state's largest district, the Jefferson County Board of Education, wants to go further than national standards and eliminate candy bars, doughnuts, and other low-nutritional, high-fat foods from its cafeterias, vending machines, and school stores.

• In Coronado, Calif., middle-schoolers have access to sodas only three days a week because parents called for a total ban and then agreed to a school-board compromise. Starting in 2004, soda will be banned in all California middle schools.

"As policy makers, the one place we have authority to control this problem is on school campuses," says Harold Goldstein, director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy in Davis. "We can't control what's taught at home, but as a society we should work to change the habits being taught in school."

"States and local school districts have the authority to go beyond the USDA and a lot of states are doing that as they look at the rising rates of obesity and diseases in kids," says Margo Wootan, director of nutritional policy with the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have passed laws stricter than the USDA regulations. But there is still room for improvement, says Ms. Wootan.

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