Pizza, chicken nuggets, bean burritos, hamburgers and french fries are all classic American junk food.

They’re also regular lunch menu items at many California elementary schools. And they’re full of fat, carbohydrates and empty calories.

The s’Cool Food Initiative, a project of the Orfalea Foundation, is trying to change that cuisine through a multi-pronged effort that includes Culinary Boot Camps for school districts’ food-service workers.

Debbie Breck, business manager of College School District in Santa Ynez, donned her white chef’s coat, rolled up her sleeves and learned a valuable lesson during the latest camp hosted recently by the Orcutt Union School District.

“I can see the full picture now,” Breck said of her epicurean epiphany. “I had a chance to walk in shoes I never would’ve had a chance to walk in otherwise.”

Breck, along with other administrators and food service workers from the Orcutt, Blochman, College and Santa Maria-Bonita school districts volunteered for five days of intense kitchen training with a singular focus.

“Learning how to cook real food,” said Loriann Heaney, a food-service worker in Orcutt. “So much of what we do is heating up what somebody else cooked.”

The heat-and-serve philosophy, combined with annual education budget cuts, led to the junk food diet. The Culinary Boot Camps are part of a program aimed at changing the menu.

Kathleen de Chadenédes oversees a team of chefs that includes Andrea Martin, Kate Adamick and Pamela Lee, along with program manager Melissa Bishop, agriculture infrastructure manager Eric Cardenas and youth and schools manager Laurel Anderson. They organize and hold the weeklong boot camps.

During the five days, campers learn how to create healthy food with fresh, local ingredients, de Chadenédes said.

In the kitchen, they learn how to bake, prepare breakfasts and lunches, handle knives, and select and use vegetables, fruits and meat. In the classroom, participants are taught time management, culinary math (budgeting and measurements), the history of school food and menu planning.

 It’s a year’s worth of education, stuffed as tightly as a pork chop into one week when everybody in the host district eats well. District employees, local kids hanging out at Orcutt Junior High, county firefighters and just about anybody who wandered by all got to sample the work of the camp chefs.

One lunch featured both barbecue and Asian chicken, stir-fried vegetables, rice, a healthy home-made macaroni and cheese, turkey sausage and lentils, corn muffins and green salad. The food was a big hit with both adults and students.

“Kitchen tested, kid approved,” said a smiling Janette Wesch, director of child nutrition for the Orcutt district. “We’ve made changes over the past few years. What this is showing my cooks is how things can be made easier and how they can work it into the scheduling.”

Getting approval from the children is important, but making the cuisine fit into school budgets that are falling faster than a ruined soufflé is another. District administration is key to affecting changes in school menus, food-service workers said. Working with both of those groups is what de Chadenédes and the s’Cool Food crew does best.

Along with the boot camps, the initiative holds Junior Chef Days, s’Cool Gardens and Food Play to get the children involved.

Junior Chef Days are school-wide events that get students into the kitchen and involved in creating meals.

S’Cool Gardens is a program run regionally in cooperation with Santa Barbara City College that enlists students to grow their own vegetables and fruits.

Food Play Productions is a traveling educational theater show that has exposed more than 3 million school children across the country to the benefits of healthy eating.

“When kids are growing and cooking, you have a much better chance of them trying new foods on their own,” de Chadenédes said.

The 10-year s’Cool Food Initiative has held seven boot camps, two of which have been in the Santa Maria Valley. After the boot camps, Martin follows up with district administrators to set achievable goals in changing their menus.

Ultimately the goal is to get healthier food into school cafeterias.

“We believe that school food is the solution, not the problem. These are the ambassadors of change,” Martin said pointing to a kitchen full of boot camp chefs busily putting the finishing touches on a lunch menu.

“The No. 1 issue is: Will the kids eat it? Because if they will, we can find a way to make it work,” Wesch said.

Learn more about the s’Cool Food initiative at www.scoolfood.org.