Meredith Royer and Danielle Zipprick, students at

, have noticed the changes in their school lunches. There is sushi on the menu now, and all kinds of wraps and salads. Fewer fried items and plenty of fruits and vegetables. It’s still possible to fill up on chips and ice cream, but they don’t see many of their classmates doing that.

“The desire to eat all unhealthy stuff is less than when we were younger,” Zipprick said. “The general feeling is that people are really aware of what they’re eating.”

Since 2007, when school districts formed wellness policies and the state Department of Education offered financial incentives for providing healthy choices, school cafeterias have changed. The West Shore School District offers daily carrot, celery, broccoli and cauliflower slices. Susquehanna Twp. School District students have several choices of pre-made salads and soups daily. Students are not allowed to buy chips unless they also purchase a meal, and chicken patties are grilled instead of fried. In the Cornwall-Lebanon School District, parents can monitor their kids' purchases and forbid junk food.

The changes in what students are buying in school are dramatic, according to some Penn State University professors who are studying the trends. There’s even some preliminary data to suggest that kids are no longer getting fatter, and might even be slightly improving their health.

The Department of Health kept statistics on the body mass indexes of nearly 1 million school children in kindergarten through sixth grade. The rates of obesity and being overweight went from 32.74 percent in the 2006-07 school year to 31.73 percent in 2007-08. That’s the latest data.

It might not sound like much, but it’s the first decline after 30 years of increasing levels of obesity, according to state Department of Health secretary Everette James. “It’s still at very high levels, but what it tells us is that some of the work we’re doing is helping,” he said. “Food service directors have played a part in the flattening of the obesity trend.”

Claudia Probart, Penn State associate professor of nutrition, and Elaine McDonnell, Department of Nutrition project coordinator, studied the top sellers in school cafeterias in 2003 and again in 2009 and found differences.

High-fat cookies, crackers and cakes were among the top five sellers in 68 percent of schools in 2003 and 20 percent in 2009. Potato chips and similar high-calorie snacks went from 45 percent to 8 percent, with ice cream dropping from 36 percent to 7 percent.

Offerings in vending machines also changed. Only 41 percent offered carbonated beverages in 2009, compared with 58 percent in 2003. Cookie offerings dropped from 38 percent to 9 percent, and candy bars slid from 36 percent to 9 percent.

A graduate student is now doing a study to compare cafeteria offerings with Body Mass Index levels, and early results “look fairly encouraging,” Probart said. “It’s hard to say there’s a direct cause and effect, but there’s something going on,” she said.

She said the Pennsylvania legislation that formed wellness committees and offered incentives of a few cents per meal if schools followed the Department of Education’s nutrition guidelines was revolutionary. About 64 percent of school districts statewide follow the department’s guidelines, according to spokeswoman Leah Harris, including most in the midstate.

Many school food services are self-supporting, meaning they must offer what students like to eat to be successful. Before the legislation, that included lots of snack foods, pizza, cookies and other calorie-packed fare, Probart said. Jack Shirk, director of the Cornwall-Lebanon food service, said he has to be creative in making healthy food attractive to eat and cost effective.

Elementary school children in the district cannot buy cake, ice cream or chips, but as students get older, they also have more freedom to choose.

Whenever students punch in PIN numbers to pay for lunch, their photos show up on a screen along with dietary notes which can, at their parents’ request, forbid them from eating junk food. Shirk said there are fewer than two dozen parents in the district who have chosen to do that. Starting next year, parents will be able to monitor what their children are ordering for lunch online. At the same time, “we don’t want to be the food police,” Shirk said.

Some national companies appear to be joining the healthy food trend. PepsiCo recently announced it will no longer sell its sugary carbonated beverages to schools anywhere in the world. Both Pepsi and Coca-Cola stopped selling high-calorie beverages to U.S. schools in 2006.

While the Cornwall-Lebanon School District still has a contract with Coke, the vending machines sell only vitamin water and juices, Shirk said. He said he’s not sure that the healthier cafeteria offerings have any effect on what students choose to eat at home, but Susquehanna Twp. Food Director Lee Ann Hocker said she hopes what students eat in school helps them make better food choices.

Greg Hummel, Derry Twp. School District’s food director, said he has seen changes in student attitudes. Even fourth-graders are starting to read nutrition labels, he said. “I think kids are starting to eat better at home,” he said. “To see them, hear them, hear their parents talk ... everyone’s working very hard at this.”

Health Secretary James said he hopes the recent statistics are the beginning of a long decline in overweight kids. The state recently received federal stimulus money to develop nutrition information labeling systems for school cafeterias and menus, he said.

He said he thinks the health reform bill and first lady Michelle Obama’s push to get kids eating better and moving more will make a difference. “For more than 30 years, this was not a priority,” he said. “What’s happening now is exciting. It’s about kids being healthy.”

Percentage of schools reporting that these items were among their top five best sellers in 2003 and 2009: