Brian Headrick is a big guy with a big appetite.

He stands 6 feet 1 inch and weighs 250 pounds. He lifts weights daily and plays varsity football. His preferred diet is meat, meat and more meat — with a dollop of mashed potatoes on the side.

"They say obesity is a problem in America; but when you're as big as me and you lift weights, you need to be constantly fueling your body," he said.

Headrick, a 17-year-old senior at Wentzville Holt High School, used to buy his lunch at school, but this year he started bringing his own. The school lunch, he said, "just doesn't cut it anymore."

The portions became so small, they did not give his varsity teammates the sustenance needed to make it through a game, Headrick said. So the entire team began bringing their lunch.

Even if the portions were bigger, Headrick is not sure he could stomach it.

"The food is horrible," he said. "The only way to make it eatable is to put a little dressing or flavoring in it, but they took that away from us."

Headrick said the school has limited or removed condiments like salt and pepper, ketchup, barbecue sauce, mayonnaise, hot sauce and salad dressing.

Students used to be able to pump ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise from dispensers, or squirt salad dressing from squeeze bottles. This year, the school switched to packets. When they go through the lunch line, students receive five "free" packets of ketchup with their meal. If they want more, they pay 5 cents per packet. They receive up to three salad dressing packets if their lunch includes a salad. Additional packets cost 30 cents each. If they do not have a salad but want to dip their fries in dressing, they must buy a packet.

The fries they dip won't be french fries. Holt threw out its fryer this year. All fries are now baked.

"Change is hard, and the kids have had several changes at once," said Melody Marcantonio, the Wentzville School District's assistant superintendent of administrative services.

The changes came about because the district must comply with federal standards, Marcantonio said. The federal government reimburses schools for free and reduced meals served to low-income students. In order to continue receiving the money, schools must comply with child nutrition standards set by the U.S Department of Agriculture.

The money flows through the state, so state inspectors review school districts to monitor compliance. In a recent state review, inspectors noted that Wentzville schools were not measuring the sodium in ketchup or the calories in salad dressing.

Kids tended to squirt ketchup and ranch dressing generously on their food, Marcantonio said. The only way schools could keep track of sodium and caloric intake was to switch from pumps and squirt bottles to packets. Salt and pepper shakers were eliminated.

The district is transitioning its lunch menus to align with new USDA guidelines designed to limit sodium, reduce calories and increase nutrition content in school lunches and breakfasts. The new guidelines are expected to take effect at the beginning of the 2012-13 school year.

"If the students are struggling with these changes now, they are really going to have a hard time next year," Marcantonio said.

This year, during the second week of school, Holt students protested the changes by staging a lunch boycott. Instead of buying lunch, they brought their own. One of the boycotters was 17-year-old senior Hannah Lucas, Student Council president.

"People realized they could pack a better lunch than the one they bought at school," she said.

Lucas said she does not dislike the school's food; she just likes her own food more. Lucas said she is an athlete — a runner — who prefers healthy foods like salad, fruit and yogurt instead of burgers and pizza. She recognizes the changes at Holt were spurred by new federal laws designed to push school lunch programs in a healthier direction.

"I think it is great that they are trying to encourage healthy eating," Lucas said. "But at the same time, you kind of need to leave that responsibility up to the child. They are trying to micro-manage what we eat."

Schools across the country are revising their lunch menus to meet the requirements mandated in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama on Dec. 13, 2010. The USDA published proposed new rules for school meals, requiring more fruits, vegetables, whole grains and fat-free or low-fat milk. Schools would be required to slash sodium levels in half and reduce calories, saturated fat and trans fats.

The standards cover breakfast and lunch for kindergarten through grade 12. High school lunches must serve students 5 cups of fruit per week and 5 cups of vegetables, including dark green and orange vegetable. Starchy vegetables, like potatoes, are limited to 1 cup per week. School districts that meet the new standards would receive an additional 6 cents reimbursement per meal.

The new standards were developed through Obama's Childhood Obesity Task Force. According to USDA data, almost 32 percent of youths ages 6-19 are overweight or obese. They are more vulnerable to chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

In the Fort Zumwalt School District, the transition to a healthier lunch menu is well under way. Paul Becker, the district's student nutrition service director, said the district in some ways exceeds the USDA rules. The district serves dark, leafy, green vegetables every day, while the USDA rules requires them just once a week.

The district has switched all of its bread products to whole grain, Becker said. Pasta, pizza, pancakes are whole grain. Fort Zumwalt's lunch programs no longer serve table salt, either in packets or shakers.

Becker said the new rules lean toward 'scratch cooking" items, or food similar to traditional dishes made from scratch at home. The problem is, made-from-scratch meals such as beef tips and noodles seem to be alien to many kids raised on a diet of processed foods, Becker said.

"We can't get the kids to eat it," he said. "The processed foods are their favorites. It is probably what they are used to at home and at restaurants. You almost need to change the culture of eating to help students recognize these foods."

When Fort Zumwalt switched to whole-grain pasta, the number of students choosing pasta dishes fell 50 percent, Becker said. But the students did not seem to notice the switch to whole-grain pizza crusts and tortillas, low-sodium cheese or low-fat cookies.

Despite some student reluctance, the district is pushing forward with the menu changes, Becker said. "I'm doing these things because I think we should do it, and because I think these things are going to happen," he said.

Changes already have come to the St. Charles School District. Chartwells, the company operating the district's lunch programs, implemented its own nutrition standards in 2010. The standards meet the proposed USDA guidelines.

"We have been working on this for years. We saw where it was going," said Shirley Derby, the district's food service director.

Derby works for Chartwells, which also provides lunch service for the Orchard Farm School District. She Chartwells took the foods kids enjoy and, instead of eliminating them, put a healthier spin on them. Now the pizza has a whole-wheat crust and low-fat mozzarella cheese. French fries are out; seasoned baked fries are in.

"If kids are not eating, they are not feeding their minds and they are not going to get educated," Derby said. "As educators, everything we do in school is a teachable moment. If we give them healthier choices in school, it educates them to make healthier choices when they go home."

Kim Fitterling, principal of St. Charles West High School, said students complained last year when her school eliminated salt. Some students started bringing their own salt shakers, she said. This year, students became upset when the school replaced french fries with baked fries, Fitterling said.

"Having healthy choices for students can't be anything but good for them," Fitterling said. "On the flip side, I feel at the high school level they should be able to make those choices without it being regulated for them."