Students in the culinary arts program at Templeton High School are responsible for putting together the largest daily lunch course in the province.
Armed with fresh ingredients and recipes, students in this program are learning hands on, cooking from 7:45 a.m. until 2 p.m., feeding more than 600 staff and students every day.
Their focus: preparing tasty and healthy dishes.
"For some students, this is the only meal they get in a day so we want to make sure it's a complete meal," said Margo Murphy, director of the culinary program. "Protein, carbohydrates, veggies fruit, etcetera - by and large a balanced meal."
Student Jeff Derkson said he has been learning about nutrition, including which vitamins and minerals help the body.
"Eating healthy these days is almost like buying health insurance for the years to come while you're a kid," he said.
Getting kids to eat healthy is still a challenge -- especially with fast food outlets down the street from the school.
"We want to compete with that," Murphy said. "So that's why when we have our wedge fries we call them fries just so it draws the kids in ... it gives them a little bit of the crispness but it's without the trans fats."
And that's just what the program hopes to provide -- healthy food and education, including a focus on the dangers of unhealthy ingredients, like trans fat.
"It gets stuck to the inside of your arteries and you can have a heart attack and die," Derkson said. "If you use quality ingredients, you minimize trans fats."
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Dr. Rhonda Low
