School lunch is most colorfully described by students.

"Disgusting," said freshman Kiley Baker. "The macaroni and cheese tasted like barf."

Seventh-grader David Frederick said the food tasted "fake, like it was made in a factory."

Baker and Frederick live in Cedar Falls, amid the rich heartland soils that grow food, and attend Malcolm Price Laboratory School.

"Why should a school serve canned corn in the middle of Iowa? asked one parent, Rob Stanley. So last week, the barf and canned corn were replaced.

An effort led by parents, who had rallied for changes after tainted beef was sold to the school two years ago, helped launch a complete overhaul of lunch at the school. It's now the only one in Iowa to prepare meals from scratch each day with food primarily grown by local farmers.

Stanley, owner of the natural-foods store Root's Market in Cedar Falls, stepped up to take over direction of the program.

The school's lunch had been so bad that Stanley took photographs of last year's food trays, which included corn dogs, crispy rice-marshmallow treats, sugary dried-fruit rolls, crustless white-bread sandwiches and Doritos.

He said the foods pictured on the tray are fortified to meet standards for meat, grains, dairy and fruits and vegetables set by the United States Department of Agriculture.

"It's funny how a corn dog and Rice Krispies treat meet the guidelines. And Fruit Roll-ups are a fruit? That's crap," he said.

The students' descriptions of school lunch changed during the first week this semester at the University of Northern Iowa-affiliated school, where preschool through 12th-grade students attend. "We never had real chicken here before, usually it was chicken patties," said Dominique Fagan, a senior holding up a chicken leg not much smaller than street-fair turkey legs. "This is like my mom's chicken."

It may be even better. The chicken came from the farm of Devan Green of nearby Conrad. The birds face no antibiotic regimens and bulk up by ranging free in the fresh air and foraging on the ground instead of fighting for space in cages.

Better yet, said Green, filling an order of 30 chickens helps provide a steady market for his birds.

The pilot program received grants from the Kellogg Foundation, the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and others to provide a framework for other schools and to explore its feasibility.

"The quality of foods kids eat is as important as math and science," said Kamyar Enshayan, director of UNI's Center for Energy and Environmental Education, which helps match local food producers with markets and helped write the grants. He is gathering experts to document the food's mental and physical effects on students.

In the first couple days at the school's Grassroots Café, the number of students eating school lunch increased from an average of 170 to nearly 300 of the 400 students.

Stanley, called "The Food Dude," has worked since May to contact local producers. He admits it hasn't been easy. During long winter months, the menu will have to be supplemented with foods from farther distances but will still be fresh and made from scratch.

The price for lunch was raised $.25 to $2.25.

But there's been less waste. The school switched from packaged foods, milk cartons and disposable trays, which created a "mountain of trash," to washable dishes, recyclable materials and composted food scraps.

On a recent lunch hour, three 30-gallon barrels were just half full of garbage.

The compost will go into school gardens that in the future will help supply food for lunch.

The need for such a program is great, Enshayan said, because food is fundamental to our culture and schools should lead the way to eating healthier.

It's a growing trend across the country, said Alexis Steines of the School Nutrition Association in Maryland. The association's recent survey showed 34 percent of U.S. schools serve some local food, helped by the last federal farm bill which eased procurement of local foods, she said.

Other schools in Iowa dabble in buying local food. Independence Community School District supplements its regular menu with local produce and will be part of a grant to study Price Lab and Waterloo schools, which hasn't launched its efforts.

Sandy Huisman, director of Food and Nutrition Department of Des Moines Public Schools, said buying local foods for 400 students is much different than buying for 30,000 in Des Moines. For example, the district once bought apples from a local producer but filling such a large order led to varied quality and size that didn't meet government standards.

But Enshayan said any school district, no matter the size, could do it.

"If the supplies aren't immediately there, they could be. Schools can shape the market as large buyers," he said. "We just need to establish the supply line. That's what a local food economy is all about."

The Price Lab program is not just about eating but getting students involved with food. On Monday, students helped shuck 500 ears of sweet corn. One day they hope to have a greenhouse and a canning production to make it through winters.

Every day, students gaze upon large banners in the lunch room describing local farms.

"We were eating apples and pointed to the banner and said, look, that's the tree this apple came from," said Jacque Bilyeu-Holmes, a lunch room employed who researched the farms to create the banners.

She plans to invite local farmers to lecture on their productions.

Then she handed over a chef salad, another of the day's options. The cucumbers, onions, purple cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes and chicken were all raised a few miles from that plate.

Easily an $8 salad in downtown Des Moines, it was $2.25 here.

The test will be maintaining the costs of egg salad sandwiches made with farm-fresh eggs and burgers made of grass-fed beef.

Each of 100 large cantaloupes bought from Stillwater Greenhouse north of Charles City, whose owners said they've seen a big increase in their business in the past year, could feed up to 12 students. At $1.50 per melon, that's a pretty inexpensive side dish, Stanley said.

And a joy to serve. One youngster wandered back to the lunch counter with his empty bowl.

"Can I have more cantaloupe?" he asked. The melon was so sweet, it tasted like candy.