As we close out our Fit Kids February coverage, NY1 looks at a high school devoted to turning teenagers into chefs. Education reporter Lindsey Christ filed the following report.

The chefs are students. The kitchen is a classroom. Perhaps most remarkably, the lettuce and tilapia they're cooking were grown inside their public high school.

"We produce our own vegetables and our own fish, which also ties in with our curriculum when we learn about fresh foods and healthy eating," says Darwin Acosta, a student.

Welcome to the High School for Food and Finance, the city's only high school devoted to the culinary arts. Students say that as they learn how to run a kitchen their entire perspective toward food changes.

"After I came to the school and you learn more about the food and what is there in the industry and the healthy eating, you learn that you don't want to eat the fast food that everybody else eats," says Acosta.

"McDonalds and Burger King and fast food restaurants, my stomach doesn't agree with them anymore. My body has just adapted to other kinds of food that are not processed," says Kristopher Lopez, a student.

A big part of learning to be healthy includes learning how to be safe. The chef instructors estimate they may spend up to 50 percent of their time with students talking about food sanitation.

"We keep telling them how to handle foods, keeping things at the right temperature - or out of the wrong temperature - wear gloves, clean uniform, because appearance is just as important as handling the food," says Geoffrey Tulloch, a school chef instructor.

Students are not just learning how to cook, they're also studying the business side of the food industry and how healthy cooking can be as good for the bottom line as it is for the waistline.

"We have to be aware that being healthy is a trend in the food industry. People today are eating healthier, they're exercising, and that is something they have to understand," notes Tulloch.

But fatty foods also have a place at the school. Students learn how to bake with sugar and fry with butter.

"You have to cook with balance," says Tulloch.

So enjoy making that burger, every now and then, he says. As long as you're making something healthy - like talapia and salad - the next day.