With 30 million school lunches served daily in U.S. public schools, improving taste and nutritional quality all at once is understandably a Herculean task. Fortunately for one school district in West Virginia, help is on the way.

British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver will work with local officials this fall to bring healthy food to Huntington, W.Va., which has the dubious distinction of being dubbed “America’s fattest city.”

Huntington was selected for Oliver’s new U.S. reality TV show because the obesity rate for the city and surrounding county is almost 50 percent. Diet-related diseases abound in the area. Nearly one-quarter of the residents have heart disease and 13 percent have diabetes. And the Associated Press recently reported that the number of pizza restaurants in Huntington is greater than the number of gyms in the entire state of West Virginia.

The new show will air on ABC and is expected to expand on Oliver’s earlier British shows. In one of them, “Jamie’s School Dinners,” Oliver took over a cafeteria and worked with a “dinner lady” to convincingly make the point that school food could be both healthy and delicious. The popularity of his campaign for more nutritious school lunches played a role in then-Prime Minister Tony Blair setting new standards for meals and allocating funding for food, facilities and training.

In West Virginia, Oliver’s focus is expected to be school cafeterias where he’ll teach kids about making healthy food choices. His influence also is likely to be felt in grocery stores, restaurants and office buildings.

To date, the food served in Huntington school cafeterias has been of the traditional variety—heavy rotations of cheeseburgers, mini corndogs, chicken nuggets, fish and chips, French fries and the like.

Lower-fat and reduced-calorie versions of some of these favorites, in addition to more fresh fruit and vegetable dishes, are expected to hit the lunchroom trays as Oliver tackles the culinary challenges in Huntington. Tune in to see how it goes.

Top 10 U.S. School Cafeteria Foods, 6 to 12 year-olds
(NPD Group consumer research)

1. Milk
2. Sandwiches
3. Fruit
4. Fruit drinks
5. Vegetables
6. Pizza
7. Chicken
8. French fries
9. Fruit salad
10. Cookies

Does your child's school lunch program need a makeover?