On a frigid February day last year, Michele Hays filed into Evanston Township High School with other concerned parents to talk with district administrators about school lunches.

One specific target of the parents' ire was a cafeteria meal called "Brunch for Lunch." As luck would have it, administrators brought a sample of the meal with them.

"When I actually saw it, it was so much worse than I thought it would be," she remembered.

"So I got up at the meeting and said, 'You may be meeting all the guidelines ... but I think it is unconscionable that you are serving pancakes, a tub of maple-flavored high-fructose corn syrup and a side of cookies for lunch.'"

Even for parents in relatively small suburban school districts, such as those in Evanston, the school food system can seem too big to change. Despite Hays' unusually open access to administrators and legislators, her yearlong effort to cut back on the weekly "Brunch for Lunch" offering in Evanston's elementary schools has failed so far.

But a Tribune examination of school food in Illinois' 10 largest districts found small positive changes are possible. Several districts serve only fruit for dessert four days of the week; some restrict nachos entrees to once a week; one has done away with breakfast Pop-Tarts; and some offer daily cold bars full of sliced fruits and vegetables.

Many of these changes have come at the prompting of health-conscious parents, the first generation to spend billions on natural and organic foods for their children. Hays recently persuaded Evanston- Skokie School District 65 to post pictures and nutrition labels for school meals online.

But substantial obstacles to change remain. Most parents, administrators and legislators agree that the national lunch program is underfunded, forcing providers to serve cheap, often low-quality, foods. The system is also structured to let children's preferences dictate the menu because if kids don't take the lunches, the food providers get less money. Those things probably won't change until Congress shapes the new rules for the Child Nutrition Act in the next few months.

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