Anyone who has ever cooked for a child knows this paradox: simple food is healthy food, children love simple foods, but children dislike simple, healthy foods.

Now, this isn’t true of every child, but it is true of every parent who has ever uttered “eat your insert-vegetable-name-here” to a pouting face across the dinner table. Being aware of nutrition and health in diet is hard for parents to manage, given this paradox.

Imagine how hard this is for school districts, who must satisfy the palates of thousands of children every day. Walking the line between taste, nutrition and simplicity is difficult, which is why school lunch programs, historically, are known to err on the side of what’s easiest.

As the epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes escalates, however, the duty of schools to address the quality of its food for kids is now clear. This is devastatingly true here in Maine, where a full-quarter of high school students are obese, according to state’s Center for Disease Control.

In Auburn, the district has rolled out a new, healthy school lunch menu, which seems to strike a smart balance toward overcoming the paradox of child appetites. It still offers chicken nuggets, a favorite item, but a healthier variety, sans the breading of its predecessors.

And wheat-crust pizza may sound like a contradiction to anybody who enjoys a slice, but it is pizza nonetheless. By offering alternatives that are incrementally better than in previous years, Auburn schools are laying the foundation for improving the health of its students.

This is the right path, for multiple reasons. Better health, for one, but also practical instruction in eating. It used to be schools would teach the food pyramid, or other principles of healthy eating, before dismissing students to a cafeteria where it was hard or impossible to do.

A little experiential learning about eating in school could make those lessons come alive, and teach kids habits that they follow the rest of their lives. Parents expect schools to do this with reading, writing and math; it’s only logical for schools to do the same with appetite.

There’s more steps to take, too. A good model is in Lewiston, where the Bates College dining center, the Commons, boasts that almost one-third of its food comes from local sources. A similar commitment by all local school districts would not only boost health, but local agriculture as well.

An awakening about food is now occurring in the United States. The celebrated food author Michael Pollan, in speaking at Bates last October, told of another paradox, this one American: we, as a culture, focus so much on nutrition, yet our nutritional health is some of the world’s worst.

There are many ways to address this. For schools, perhaps the easiest, most effective way of doing so is re-considering its menu with an eye toward health. Auburn has done this, and we’re eager to measure, in a few years, what the effect has been.

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Joshua Lavigne, 5, a kindergarten student at Walton Elementary School in Auburn, takes a bite of his whole wheat pizza during lunch Friday as school Principal Michelle McClellan visits with students. Auburn’s K-8 schools have switched to healthier foods such as more wheat breads and pasta, baked potato wedges instead of French fries and fresh fruits and vegetables.