Kathy Del Tonto started cooking school food 30 years ago in the  school district at the foot of Coloradoâs San Juan Mountains. Back then, the cafeteria workers made everything from scratch.
âMy first kitchen that I managed was a little country school out south of town, and we made our own ketchup and everything,â she says.
But times changed. Families started eating more fast food, and processing companies started offering schools fast-food kinds of choices. The companies would take the food that the U.S. Department of Agriculture gives to schools, turn it into chicken nuggets and other processed items kids want, and then send it to cafeterias â for less than cooking it on site would cost.
Del Tonto went along with it. âBy doing processed food you can cut your labor because you donât have to do the hard cooking, or youâre just reheating and that kind of thing,â she explains.
Increasingly, though, the  to reduce childhood obesity by improving what kids eat in school has changed the game. It means schools are now required to serve more fresh fruits and vegetables. And thereâs a movement within the movement that promotes the retro notion of cooking meals from scratch. And that takes a change in the hearts and minds of those behind the lunch line.
, a chef from Boulder, Colo., wants Del Tonto and all other cafeteria workers onboard. He says with a little training, food staff can cook the food on site.
âI ask them if they cook chicken at home and theyâre like, âOf course I cook chicken at home,â and I say, âIs it difficult?â âNo, I do it all the time,â â says Shethar. âAnd so I think about transferring the love you give your food at home â why shouldnât it be in the schools?â
Despite the rap that itâs more expensive to cook, Shethar believes it can be done for the same price as having the food processors do it. Shethar travels around Colorado with a group called , which teaches districts like Del Tontoâs how to switch to more healthful food. Think of it as a boot camp for the lunch lady set.
At first, Del Tonto was not pleased.
âI didnât like somebody coming in and telling me I was doing it wrong. We were giving kids what they loved. We had huge lunch counts; they were happy. Nobody was complaining,â she says.
That was two years ago. Del Tonto was in charge of food for all 11 schools in her district, and she had them serving processed foods almost exclusively.
But by the end of the school food training, she was a changed woman.
âWhen I sat there in that classroom and knew the obesity rate had increased 30 percent, when I saw photos of kids and knowing that that generation doesnât have the life expectancy that their parents [have] â as a mom, thatâs a shock-and-awe moment,â she says. âI remember thinking in my head, if itâs not me, whoâs it gonna be thatâs going to take that on? And if not now, when?â
Two years later, Del Tontoâs schools have switched from mostly processed foods to making 95 percent of what kids eat from scratch.
But it wasnât easy. It required training staff members, educating them about healthful eating, and lots of repetition to get the kids to make the more healthful choices.
Those challenges, and others, are more than most schools want to take on, says Joe Pawlak, a school . It takes money, new equipment and retraining cafeteria staff. Del Tontoâs school had .
Del Tonto remains committed to serving nearly all meals in her schools cooked from scratch. She says lunch ladies feel better serving things theyâve made themselves.
âJust knowing the love and the care we put in that food, hoping that it makes a difference for some of those kids.â
This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes ,  and Kaiser Health News.