SANDY — The connoisseurs have spoken: Chicken fries, queso sauce and fizzy fruit juice are yummy.

First- through 12th-graders from a dozen Utah school districts gathered at the UCARE Food Fair Friday to cast their votes for new school lunch items, from sweet-potato fries to French toast. The distinguishing palates sampled dozens of delectables and graded each with either a smiley or a frowny face.

Child-nutrition bosses at UCARE (Utah Cooperative Acquiring Resources Efficiently) will tally the votes. Those with more than 75 percent smiley faces may be included in next year's school lunch menu, mainly, if the price is right.

"This gives us the (tools) to determine what our kids' preferences are," said Jodi Vlam, school lunch supervisor for Murray School District. "Because we can all create wonderful menus ... but it if ends up in the garbage cans, all our efforts are for naught."

The taste-testing party included students from Alpine, Box Elder, Cache, Logan, Ogden, Tooele, Murray, Provo, Emery, Carbon, Sevier and Jordan school districts. The adults who put the food on their plates also cast votes.

"For me, I liked those sweet potatoes," said Dix Wright, a Mount Ogden Middle School cook.

Seven-year-old Brian Perez from Ogden's Lincoln Elementary liked the chocolate cookies — along with just about everything else.

"We're going to have to haul you away, kid!" Lincoln lunch manager Connie Emerson chuckled as Perez popped a French toast square into his mouth and grinned. "He's been eating everything!"

So had Washington High junior Daunte Watkins.

"I've got so much food in my mouth and stomach, I don't know," he said when asked if the oatmeal cookies were any good. "I like mostly everything — except the green beans. They weren't doing too much."

More than 200 students participated in the food fair, put on for the seventh year by the cooperative. Most took the task seriously, taking their time to fill in their score cards. Several used water to cleanse their palates in between chips and cookies.

The featured foods were selected for nutritional content — one was a nutritionally enhanced spaghetti sauce — low in sodium and fat and having no trans-fats, Vlam said.

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