Doreen Sharp is cutting carrots that are so fresh their aroma fills her kitchen. She moves to the cooker to stir a newly made beef casserole, and on her way back to the chopping board she opens her larder fridge and pulls out a large bowl of plump strawberries.

On the menu today is home-made chicken broth; beef bourguignon with organic boiled potatoes and cabbage; green salad; pasta Italienne served with salad; spicy vegetable couscous; baked potato with ham and pineapple; fruit skewer; and profiteroles. The food is a riot of colour, and the air in the spotless stainless-steel kitchen is filled with the aroma of herbs and spices. There isn't a chip or a burger in sight, and the 300 pupils at her school are happy.

Sharp, 42, has been school cook at Nether Robertland primary school in Stewarton, Ayrshire, for 20 years, but she has never been more fulfilled. Her school is one of the first in Britain to embrace Food for Life, the school meals system that uses food produced by local people.

"I've seen a lot of changes over that time, but this is the best we've ever had," she says. "It's such a joy to work with good raw ingredients. You get much better results, and there is much less waste and you get bigger portions for your money.

"Before, I was using bought-in processed sausages and burgers, or frozen, ready-breaded fish. I had to use grey, fatty meat. We had chips three or four times a week. Now I can actually see the children enjoying their food."

Food for Life is a voluntary extension of Hungry for Success, introduced by the Scottish Executive in 2002 at a cost of £63.5m for two sets of three years. The second phase of funding runs out next year. Part of the 1996 Scottish Diet Action Plan, Hungry for Success (HFS) set new nutritional standards for all school meals, which are now enshrined in law and subject to examination by HM Inspectorate of Education. Food and drink with high fat, salt and sugar content was to be replaced with healthier options, oily fish was to be served once a week, and processed meat products only once a week. Brown bread was always to be on offer, and there were to be two helpings of vegetables and two of fruit on every menu every day.

Each local authority was allocated funds to help all schools become HFS-compliant, though how this money is actually spent is up to individual councils.

Food for Life was devised by the Soil Association, and promotes school meals that contain 75% unprocessed, 50% local and 30% organic ingredients, based on the principle that such food is naturally more nutritious, cuts down on food miles and promotes sustainability. Food for Life was introduced in Scotland in 2003 following the implementation of Hungry for Success, with the aim of working with local authorities and public-sector caterers to develop HFS by helping them source food that complied with Food for Life principles.

Under the direction of its head of catering, Robin Gourlay, East Ayrshire became the first local authority in the UK to achieve Food for Life targets after piloting the scheme in spring 2006; 26 primary schools are now signed up. The Highlands and North Ayrshire have also signed up, and Dumfries & Galloway, Argyll & Bute and the Borders have recently expressed interest. The Soil Association is in early talks with Glasgow City Council, while one English local authority has adopted the Food for Life scheme and five more are set to do so.

In East Ayrshire, three-year supply contracts were advertised, and the school kitchens are now supplied direct and daily with grass-fed beef and lamb by Afton Glen farm in New Cumnock, fresh fruit and vegetables by Stair Organics in Tarbolton, cheese by Dunlop Dairy, fresh fish by Pieroni & Sons of Ayr, milk by Clyde Organics in Liberton and eggs by Corrie Mains farm in Mauchline. Contracts are awarded half on quality and half on price and are renewable every three years, which removes the "cosy arrangements with suppliers" that are too often apparent. Meals are made on-site from scratch every day, and served with proper crockery and cutlery. In some schools, uptake of school meals has increased by 30%.

Although it is an entirely optional add-on to Hungry for Success, what Gourlay finds attractive about Food for Life is that it widens children's "food vocabulary" to embrace such concepts as couscous, roasted vegetables, mackerel and salmon. It also helps invest in the local economy, helps children reconnect with the land, and brings food into the mainstream curriculum.

As well as some of the most affluent areas in Scotland, East Ayrshire contains some of the most deprived - which, says Gourlay, makes procuring good-quality school meals all the more imperative. For many of his young charges, school lunch is the only proper meal of the day.

Challenging the assumption that school food should be cheap food has not been without its problems. "Food for Life is more expensive to deliver," admits Gourlay, who was described yesterday as a "visionary" at the Soil Association's annual conference at Celtic Park in Glasgow. "At the outset, a locally sourced two-course meal cost us 20p more than previously but now, 14 months on, the price differential has been reduced to 9p," he says. Rather than this cost being put on the price of a meal, it is charged to Gourlay's Hungry for Success budget of £650,000. The price of a two-course lunch remains at £1.52, with an optional pick-and-choose menu with items as low as 30p.

Gourlay now plans to roll out Food for Life to all 44 primary and nine secondary schools in East Ayrshire. "We're doing it in phases to bring the producers and catering managers with us. In some cases, producers need to increase their capacity, and that can't happen overnight."

In Highland Region, which is equivalent in size to Belgium, geography makes local sourcing a very different matter, but the Food for Life scheme is already taking hold.

Secondary schools remain a nut still to be cracked, however. Although Hungry For Success was implemented at all schools, no secondary school anywhere in Scotland has yet embraced the Food for Life policy. Pam Rodway, Food for Life co-ordinator in Scotland, explains why. "In some local authorities there has been resistance to Hungry for Success, so headteachers are nervous about introducing yet more change. They're worried that if they change things too much - say by excluding chips completely - the kids will simply go into town to buy them.

"We hope the children who are currently experiencing Food for Life in primary school will create a strong enough demand for it by the time they reach secondary school. It is much easier to change the food culture in younger children, and that is why we have begun Food for Life with primary schools. But we fully intend to help secondary schools, too."

The policy appears to be working. After a three-year slump following the introduction of Hungry for Success, official figures show the proportion of pupils in secondary taking school meals has risen from an all-time low of just 43.4% in 2006 to 44.9% last year.

According to Gourlay, who has become something of a Food for Life ambassador for Scotland, central funding for HFS remains essential if this is to continue. "This has to be seen as a long-term thing and we are still in transition. If we want school meals to move from being a commercial service to being viewed as a health and wellbeing service, we need to maintain the funding. We wouldn't want to turn the clock back now."

The Scottish Executive said yesterday that continued funding for Hungry for Success will be considered as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review in the autumn. A spokeswoman explained that the initial funding for the scheme was to help with the set-up costs involved in schools becoming HFS-compliant. So, how much ongoing funding will be required - or allocated - is open to question.

However, the Scottish government is planning to pilot free school meals for three primary schools later this year, at a cost of £5m.

Can Food for Life exist without support funding from Hungry for Success? The Soil Association has funding for one full-time Food for Life adviser in Scotland, and hopes to enlarge its Scottish team with money from the Big Lottery Fund. As Soil Association director Hugh Raven explains: "Getting schools wanting this is only half the battle."

Here's a taste of what's on offer On the Soil Association's Food for Life school meals menu in different local authorities:

Highland region