Reader Barb Williams forwarded this article by Kim Severson:

But perhaps no school is taking a more wide-ranging approach in a more hard-pressed area than the Promise Academy, a charter school at 125th Street and Madison Avenue where food is as important as homework. Last year, officials took control of the students’ diets, dictating a regimen of unprocessed, regionally grown food both at school and, as much as possible, at home.
Experts see the program as a Petri dish in which the effects of good food and exercise on students’ health and school performance can be measured and, perhaps, eventually replicated.