Philadelphia ? Five Philadelphia elementary schools replaced sodas with fruit juice. They scaled back snacks and banished candy. They handed out raffle tickets for wise food choices. They spent hours teaching kids, their parents and teachers about good nutrition.

What have they got to show for it?

The number of kids who got fat during the two-year experiment was half the number of kids who got fat in schools that didn’t make those efforts.

The bad news: There were still plenty of new overweight kids in the five schools – over 7 percent of them became overweight compared to the 15 percent in the schools that didn’t make changes.

The 1,349 students in the study were in grades four to six. At the start, about 40 percent were overweight or obese. Many received free or subsidized meals.

After two years, besides fewer new overweight children, the overall number of overweight students at the five schools dropped about 10 percent to 15 percent. At the no-change schools, the number of overweight children rose a quarter to 20 percent.