MARS — Change is coming to the Mars School District’s lunch and nutrition programs for the new school year.

On-site food service director Mallory Hamilton and regional manager Jodee Raybuck of The Nutrition Groups announced the changes at the Mars School Board meeting Wednesday night, laying out the updates they’ve made to better serve the students.

The changes focus on offering new options and encouraging student feedback while maintaining a commitment to serving nutritious food for the student body.

For the elementary school, the group is bringing back “Lunch for Life,” a free, three-day program in which students learn how to go through a line and build a lunch. This is to make the process less intimidating for students who have never done it before.

There also will be “Tasty Bites” days, during which nutritious desserts will be offered and “Wellness Wednesdays” where students will be exposed to new and different food that they may not normally have the chance to try.

The middle school will feature “Tasty Specials,” food sold a la carte apart from the normal lunch line.

There will also be “Lucky Lunch,” a sort of scratch-off lottery for students engaging in the lunch and nutrition programs to win prizes.

The high school students will have the most responsibility with “Taste the Goodness,” in which students report back on the meals they like or dislike for a chance to win prizes like a $100 gift card, headphones and more.

The service is also adding a day for homestyle food and is continuing the farm-to-fork food initiative wherein students can partake in fruits and vegetables grown by local farms and farmers.