Elementary students in the Berkeley Unified School District have some strange eating habits. No Pop-Tarts, no cheese-flavored Doritos, not even those little doughnuts with the powdered sugar. They prefer weeditos—their own version of burritos. At recess, the kids run to the garden—all 16 of the schools in the district have one—tear themselves off a big chard leaf, fill it with a handful of edible flowers and a plump radish, roll it up, and chow down. Sometimes they go back for seconds and thirds.

Then they go home and ask for spinach.

It seems a little too good to be true. But according to a study conducted by Berkeley's Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Center for Weight and Health, the district's students are discovering vegetables in a big way. "We have moms coming in asking 'What is jicama? My kid loves it and wants to eat it at home,'" says Suzanne Rauzon, director of the study.

In 2006, the center began a comprehensive examination of the children's eating habits and behaviors. They wanted to know whether the Berkeley district's School Lunch Initiative, one of the most ambitious programs in the country, would really change the way kids eat. And if it did, how would it affect students' academic performance and levels of fitness?

It all started in 1995, when Berkeley restaurateur Alice Waters '67 founded the Edible Schoolyard (soon after, funded by her Chez Panisse Foundation), a one-acre organic garden and kitchen classroom, at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School. In the years to follow, other schools in the district planted gardens paid for with grant money from the Network for a Healthy California, a consortium of local, state, and national organizations working to improve the health of low-income families through increased fruit and vegetable consumption and exercise. Besides gardening, the district added nutrition and cooking classes.

Then in 2004, the Chez Panisse Foundation and the Center for Ecoliteracy along with educators, parents, and nutrition experts decided to revamp the district's cafeteria lunches. They hired celebrated school chef Ann Cooper as Director of Nutrition Services, and she in turn outlawed the serving of processed foods and went to an everything-from-scratch kitchen. Produce was purchased from local farms, dairy products from local creameries, and breads and pizza crusts from local bakeries—organic whenever possible.

"I think the Berkeley model is a role model for everyone around the country," says Kate Adamick, of the Orfalea Foundation's S'Cool Initiative, a nonprofit working with Santa Barbara County's school districts to start similar programs.

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