In Berkeley, Calif., lunch has become a learning experience

Ms. Cooper ladles the sauce over a bin of rotini noodles and mixes it all together. The noodles disintegrate in her hands, and lunch turns into, well, red mush.

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"I've been looking at it all morning," Cooper says, "and I've just been in tears because ... this is what we're feeding our kids."

Though she made the sauce from scratch, the low-quality "commodity noodles" ordered through the US government's national school lunch program are a good example of what's served in schools across the country, she says.

Cooper hopes to change that. Her arrival last October as the new director of nutrition services for Berkeley's public schools coincided with the district's new School Lunch Initiative, an ambitious long-range plan to put the district's 10,000 students on a path of lifelong healthy eating habits. In California, 28 percent of schoolchildren are overweight or obese, reflecting a nationwide problem.

Berkeley's School Lunch Initiative aims to replace low-quality "heat and eat" processed foods with fresh, locally grown food. The plan also teaches kids about how food gets from seed to plate by establishing school gardens and kitchen classrooms that integrate lessons about food and cooking into the academic curriculum. Organizers hope children will not only learn about the art and science of food, but also adopt nutritious eating habits.

"Teaching kids about food is as important as math or science," Cooper says.

Berkeley is not alone in trying to encourage children to eat better. According to the US Centers for Disease Control, 16 percent, or about 9 million school-age children in the US are overweight - a figure that's tripled since 1980. The news has caused many schools to rethink lunch menus and eliminate junk food by pulling the plug on vending machines and turning away soft-drink corporations bidding for so-called "pouring rights."

The Chez Panisse Foundation, founded by restaurateur and food activist Alice Waters, has committed to raising $4 million to jump-start Berkeley's school-lunch initiative. While the long-term cost of the plan is unknown, backers say the benefit of spending more on nutritious lunches for children now means spending less on healthcare later. "They're being educated out there by a fast-food nation," Ms. Waters says. "We have to really see the public school system as a way to teach a different set of values."

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