By Stacia Kalinoski

EUGENE, Ore. -- With child obesity rates soaring, many parents sending their kids back to school may worry what's in that school lunch.

Local districts have made changes to ease that worry a bit.  The Bethel School District is cutting their sodium content by cutting out 15 processed foods. 4J has spent the last six years growing produce in school gardens, and the fruit and veggies will finally show up in the lunch room.

What grows in the 4J elementary school garden will for the first time, end up on student lunch plates.

Come Monday, red chard and other fresh produce will start replacing the canned veggies going into students' mouths, thanks to grants that allowed the schools to buy from their own gardens.

While the Bethel District doesn't have school gardens, they are buying more local corn, carrots and salad toppings this year.

Students will find the wider selection in the salad bar, but they also might notice a few things missing from last year.

15 products will be eliminated or replaced due to high salt content.  Pickles were cut, the barbeque sauce recipe revamped, and instead of serving breaded chicken patties, they're serving un-breaded chicken fillets.

Then there's a school favorite of cheese enchiladas, which instead of being frozen, will be home-made this year.

Now, the hard work is encouraging kids to ditch the popcorn chicken and pizza, which some say they'll still pick over the low-sodium chicken stir-fry.

For Bethel, it costs more in labor to make items like cheese enchiladas from scratch then to pull it out of a box, so to balance the budget, they're serving less meal items day to day.

4J will break ground on 11 more garden beds in a couple of weeks.