SAN DIEGO – San Diego schools are catering lunch menus to minority students with a new special chicken bowl that complies with the Muslim religion and other meals still in the works.

“A new popular dish found exclusively on the Crawford High School cafeteria lunch menu is making a world of difference to students who are mostly Muslim,” San Diego 6 reports. “Because their faith does not allow them to eat pork or pork products and no meat slaughtered outside their religion guidelines, the district’s food and nutrition services is offering halal chicken, twice a week.”

San Diego Unified School District food and nutrition services director Gary Petill told the news site about 400 more students trek to the cafeteria on halal chicken days. He said the district decided to offer the special meals because too many students were opting to going hungry instead of choking down previous offerings.

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“It distracts me from participating in class because I’m thinking about, what should I eat and I’m thinking about ‘oh, I’m hungry,’ I should eat something or should I go home now and eat?” 17-year-old Ali Ahmed told San Diego 6.

Petill said the halal chicken is part of a pilot program aimed at serving the area’s minority students foods they’re more familiar with, and that comply with Muslim religious rules that are similar to a Kosher diet.

“It’s Mary’s Free Range, vegetarian-fed, antibiotic-free, hormone-free, air-chilled organic chicken that you’d find in Whole Foods,” Petill told KPBS.

“We really try to work with the communities to best fit the food choices that they have, because we want students to eat,” he said. “We have a very large Hispanic population so we want to have maybe ‘Taco Tuesday’ or serve a bean and cheese burrito, or in a community with an Asian community, an Asian chicken bowl.”

Petill said the special chicken is more expensive, but that’s offset by more students buying lunch.

Crawford parent Mariam Ali told KPBS her son is eating lunch at school more often because of the halal chicken, and she’s grateful for it.

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“Before, I’d say, ‘OK, how way your day today?’ ‘I’m hungry. I didn’t eat the food,’” Ali said. “I know he’s starving.”

Crawford student Rosa Duarte isn’t Muslim, but said she campaigned for the new lunches simply because she couldn’t stand the old ones.

“I normally will not eat at school because the food options were not good,” said student Rosa Duarte, who is not Muslim.

“But with the halal chicken drumstick bowl, I actually am eating at school and I have more energy to go through the day and then go to my sports afterwards,” she said.

Petill explained that all students in schools where 40 percent or more of students receive federal assistance receive free lunches, so low participation was a sign the district needed to step up its game.

At Crawford, calculus students are now collecting data on the pilot program to help gauge its effectiveness in driving more students into the lunch line, KPBS reports.