No matter how you slice it, the days of milk and cookies are long gone as schools aim to provide students with healthy fruits and vegetables as snacks.

But raw onions?

That's what several classes of students at Southeast's Turner Elementary were fed Tuesday, instead of the zucchini slices the school's food provider, Chartwells, said it would serve as part of a federal initiative to provide healthy food to young learners.

When Trevor Rill picked up the snack bags from the cafeteria for his third-grade class, he found bundles of raw scallions -- those long, green stalks of onion usually reserved for cooking.

"I asked the cafeteria workers, 'Are you serious?' and they said, 'This is what they sent us,'" said Rill, one of nine City Year corps members assigned to Turner. "So I held them out and said, 'This is what we have,' and the kids went nuts. Two of them ate it in front of me and said, 'This is disgusting.'"