The kitchen in the Alcala family's home was busy on a recent Sunday. Eric, 8, grabbed a banana from a basket on the counter. Isaac, 5, snatched one of the carrots his mother had washed. And they all made room as dad Eric Sr. came in from the store with the pasta that would go into this midday meal.

The whole-grain angel hair, vegetables, skinless chicken and more are all part of this recipe that Jennifer never would have dreamed her family would eat. But that was before they all participated in a pilot program with the Palomar Family YMCA in Escondido, Calif., designed to help families improve their diet, their activity levels and their connection to each other.

It's called Healthy Family Home and it rolled out nationwide on April 12. The Alcalas were among families in five cities across the country who gave it a 10-week trial run.

"It started in early November and ran till the middle of January," said Sabra Gardner, associate executive director of the Palomar Y, who oversaw the pilot program there. "We had 18 families who started and 13 who finished."

Gardner said she found the parents through their children - at the Y's gymnastics and swim programs and after-school child care sites. She even brought in a couple of families not affiliated with the Y.

The Alcalas and other participating families attended an orientation meeting, received printed materials and then went home to do things on their own. Their first homework was to make a list of all the things in their fridge.

Jennifer said it wasn't a pretty picture: soda, the whole milk her husband and four boys love and more. Then they went through the cabinets. Armed with new knowledge on food labels, this assignment was no easier.

"I couldn't believe how much sugar is in Rice Krispies," recalled Andrew. Or his favorite snack, peanut butter cups.

For Brandon and Eric Sr., the soda was a stunner.

"My husband would go to the store and get three 12-packs if they were on sale," she said, eyeing him with a smirk.

"I had soda everywhere - in my truck, in the garage, in the refrigerator, at work," said Eric Sr., a mechanic for a construction company, shaking his head.

Today, there are no Rice Krispies in the house, no soda, no potato chips, and Andrew's favorite snack is now a once-in-a-while treat.

"If you don't bring it in the house, they can't eat it," said Jennifer, who works full time in home health care.

What you will find, among other things, is brown rice, whole-grain cereals with no added sugar and low-fat milk.

"It has literally been a battle for years with my husband to get him to give up whole milk," Jennifer said. "When we had the class with the nutritionist, she made it rather clear that there is no place in our lives for whole milk and that nonfat or 1 percent is best. I have noticed, since he is the one buying the milk, to my surprise he has chosen 1 percent. That is a huge step for him, and I am so glad that we could make that change as well."

Small steps, slowly, become long-term changes, Gardner said. Classes and handouts on food labels, conversation starters to use at the dinner table to get families talking, and taking walks before dinner are what mattered.

Weight loss was not part of the program, although Eric Sr. admits to eating less and fitting better in his clothes.

"The goal was to give them the resources and tools they need so they would be eating healthier, moving more and connecting as families," Gardner explained.

Most importantly, it was the family working together on improvements. Without everyone buying into the program, it can't work.

Jennifer Alcala already had seen that. She said she'd tried more times than she could remember to change some of these very same things, but the men in her life rebelled. Only when they agreed to be a team and try the program did anything change. But it was slow, and it was hard.

"We went to a cooking class as part of the program," she recalled. "I had told them we were going to eat dinner there."

When they got to the Y's classroom, there was a table with a big bowl of lettuce and a bunch of smaller bowls with things they could add to the big bowl, some of which her husband and boys had never thought to put in a salad.

"Sunflower seeds, raisins, peppers that weren't green," Brandon said, trying to remember the nearly two dozen items.

"The key was to get your salad as colorful as possible," Jennifer Alcala explained.

When it came to the dressing, they could use as much as they wanted. But it had to be tablespoon by tablespoon. Gardner said the point was to see how much they were adding.

Eric Sr. said they were all quite surprised to see how good it looked and how much they had learned. Then they were ready for dinner. His wife told her family the salad was dinner.

"We were expecting pizza ... or something," Andrew said with a wry grin.

The Alcalas had a lot of expectations altered through the pilot program that ended in late January.

"They had to fill out evaluation forms at the beginning and at end of the program," Gardner said. "The questions were things like what's in your fridge, how often do you eat meals together. We were looking for differences. Does this program, when you hand families stuff to do on their own, does it make a difference?"

Gardner said the full results of the pilot aren't out yet, but she knows from talking to her families that they see a difference.

"They have more of an emphasis on drinking water, more emphasis on TV and computer time limits," she said. "One single mom told me the thing she liked best was that they got talking as a family with those conversation starters."

Gardner and the Alcalas emphasized that succeeding in the program, or in life after the program, is about simply paying attention to what you're doing. Or not doing.

"You can't drag someone along to healthy eating," Gardner said. "It just doesn't happen, people become resentful.

But you can make small, sustainable changes. You have to fit it into your family, your lifestyle."

Take salad, for example. Last week, Eric Sr. stirred the salad his wife had made and teased, "Jennifer, there's not much color in this salad."

For the Alcala family, TV and video games are weekend fun and the computer is for schoolwork only during the week. They want to take more family walks, be more active, and they will work on that. Meantime, they aren't into many absolutes. It's not about never doing this, always doing that. Even soda is OK when they go out to eat.

"We just have to make conscious choices," Jennifer said. "You will find brownie mix in my cupboard. Every once in a while, a yummy, chewy brownie is just good."

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