"When those mushrooms are cooked, they're off the hook!"

Tomatoes are a no-go zone though for this grade two student from New Orleans, who in addition to her love for flavorsome fungi, is also partial to bananas, plums and peaches.

With her peers she debates www.freshfruitportal.com's hardline question, what do you think is the tastiest fruit or vegetable?

"Carrots!" shouts a boy at the back. "I love the baby carrots."

Several students nod and smile in agreement, at least until someone else throws a spanner in the works by suggesting bananas.

"Yeah, bananas are the best," says one boy.

"Plums are my favorite," adds another girl, and she has the pit on her styrofoam plate to prove it.

When each new product is brought into the discussion, it seems to emerge as the new favorite for many kids and the ire of others. Such is the fickle taste of a child.

As lighthearted as the conversation seems, it is one worth having. According to a 2011 study by Northwestern University, 83% of men and 72% of women in the U.S. would be overweight or obese by 2020 if the trends at the time continued.

It is not just the kids of today who can help change the eating habits for the future, but more imporantly those who feed them. The public, with great support from the produce industry and government, has rallied behind a range of causes and initiatives to promote healthier lifestyles; Sesame Street's recent decision to offer its images to produce marketers free of charge is one of them.

The 'Let's Move Salad Bars 2 Schools' campaign, also supported by First Lady Michelle Obama, is another.

Having written about this program that to date has provided buffet-style salad bars to help feed more fruits and vegetables to 1,373,500 U.S. schoolchildren, www.freshfruitportal.com decided to pay a visit to one of its beneficiaries prior to the Produce Marketing Association's (PMA) Fresh Summit trade fair in the Big Easy.

Campaign co-founder United Fresh connected us with counselor Shanelle Blunt-Jupiter from the Martin Behrman Charter School, who led www.freshfruitportal.com around a lively canteen of produce, hamburger and corn chip-loving kids in the city's historic community of Algiers.

Click here for photos from the visit, and here for more stories from our Produceforkids tag page.

"I don't remember ever having this option as a child, but now that we have it here for elementary kids, it’s going to build their good habits," Jupiter says as we observe the different options for the day in the salad bar - bananas, a lettuce and tomato salad, sliced cucumber, fresh plums and canned peach.

"Sometimes they may not be exposed to it. Parents are busy and have to do a lot of things in order to be able to sit there and spend time with their kids; sometimes people get the fast food options and don't always have salads.

"If we can do it here and get them involved and introduced to that, and they say ‘mmm, this is good, I’m going to try this', or 'Mom, can I get this when we go to the grocery store?' then I want them to be able to do that. I'm excited that they have it.

While fresh produce options have been in the canteen in the time that Jupiter has worked at the school, she says it still reinforces the healthy eating culture. Teacher Herschel Stevenson has been working at the school for 30 years and emphasizes that a great deal has changed.

"Years ago when I started it came out in a bag actually, but now it’s fresh and appealing to them and they love it," Stevenson says.

"Before the vegetables were just thrown on the plate. You could see that it was not fresh and wasn't crisp or enjoyable. It was just mush. Now the kids look forward to it.

"It's a big issue. The South isn't really known for eating a lot of healthy foods - they pack a lot of fats and salts - but kids are willing to try a lot of things, so it's important to give them that exposure early," adds teacher Stephanie Dunn.

View from the ground

The kids at Martin Berhman are eager to get their photos taken with fruits, vegetables, or anything for that matter, all smiles and laughing about the novelty of a foreign journalist who is interested in their views.

"I think it’s great because it gives us a variety of fruits every day and it helps us with our nutrients, so when we get back to class we have a better start - it makes our brains work faster and better," says one child.

But does it make her want to eat more produce at home?

"Yes. When I see something new, I'm like 'let's get it, I want to try it!' So then we get it. Sometimes it's nasty, and sometimes it's good."

A group of kids from an older grade highlight the food is much better now at Martin Behrman than it used to be.

"I love how the school has interpreted salad bars because they used to just serve us all the greasy foods - it really made a lot of kids have a lack of interest in what the teachers were teaching us, but when they introduced the salad bar it really bumped up my focus in what the teachers were having the lesson about," adds one.

"I eat most of my vegetables unless it's Brussels Sprouts, which makes me feel queasy, but I like all the other vegetables. Mostly it's because they make me feel better.

Her friend says the class recently worked on an essay about how sugary foods can affect health through obesity and diabetes, and since then she has eaten better than before from the salad bar.

"When the salad bar came in the majority of kids stopped bringing their own lunches," chimes in one of the boys.

The salad bar alone cannot ensure healthy eating. The canteen still serves junk food and as one teacher says, "you give them the choice to eat fruit or pizza and they're more likely to choose pizza". The boys sitting with him agree.

"All I want to eat is pizza. They should take away all that salad and just make it pizza," says one.

"I don't know if this is necessarily healthy. They're still eating chips, you have processed fruit with chemicals on it and I'm not sure if dipping carrots in ranch sauce is all that healthy either," adds the teacher.

While not all the food is 100% healthy in the strictest sense, a great deal of it is fresh and packed with nutrients that are absent in many manufactured foods. In the words of the canteen manager, "the kids love it. They destroy the salad bar".

As far as broader produce consumption in the area is concerned, Blunt-Jupiter mentions most people in the neighborhood depend on local grocery stores, which is why the advent of farmers' markets has been so important.

"They don't always have the most fresh produce there [in the grocery stores], so the farmers’ markets are a great addition for the community to get some real greens and tomatoes - things that they don’t normally get.

www.freshfruitportal.com