Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/schools-aim-to-provide-healthy-lunches Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript While American schools celebrate National School Lunch week, many are making efforts to provide meals that are both tasty and health conscious. The NewsHour reports on such efforts in St. Paul, Minn., schools. Read the Full Transcript FRED DE SAM LAZARO, NewsHour Correspondent: Long before the kids come to school in St. Paul, the staff at the district's main kitchen have been hard at it. Their daunting task: 40,000 lunches, headed to 98 different lunchrooms.But in the off times, a celebrity chef has been volunteering his time to help make the food coming out of here healthier and tastier. SETH DAUGHERTY, Chef: … one tablespoon of mint puree, because when you're doing… FRED DE SAM LAZARO: A 42-year-old father of two school-aged children, Seth Daugherty has been revamping recipes. Some, he says, have been simply awful. SETH DAUGHERTY: One of the last times I was here, I worked on a meat lasagna recipe that was a large recipe. It was like 60-plus pounds of salt, 80 pounds of brown sugar, and 100 pounds of textured vegetable protein. But when I was finished, it was half the amount of salt, no sugar, and no textured vegetable proteins, adding a bunch of raw garlic and fresh onions to it, really making it a sauce again. FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Daugherty has been on the cover of Food and Wine, one of the best new chefs in 2005, and now teaches at a culinary school. He wants to give kids what he calls "real food." SETH DAUGHERTY: And I really want these kids to be the ones that will break the cycle of processed foods and bring that culture of cooking back into our society, where one-third of all meals are eaten in cars, which is scary.