Tony Geraci, 52, "is one of several go-ahead national leaders whose names always come up at conferences on childhood obesity and school nutrition when charismatic dreamers have been dismissed and everyone is in despair over how to get children, especially poor children, to eat better food," the Atlantic magazine reports in "Fixing Lunch."

Writer Corby Kummer describes Geraci as "a stocky, blunt guy who grew up in the projects of New Orleans" and faced weight problems and diabetes. He owned and operated six restaurants, worked as a food broker for 14 years and was even a professional race-car driver.

He has gotten rid of vending machines in all but the city's high schools, and gotten the "crap food" out of the machines that remain. To get fresh food, he found farmers who would sell and deliver peaches for less than he would pay for processed peaches packed in syrup. He even found an abandoned city-owned orphanage on 33 acres, hired a farm manager, and turned it into an organic farm run by schoolchildren.

"You have to hustle," Geraci says, crediting his business experience for helping him push through for fast change since he arrived in Baltimore last summer.