As statistics point to expanding waistlines and schools struggle to make lunches healthier, one Gloucester company has a message for the health conscious: eat more fried chicken.

Proteus Industries, a 6-year-old company that developed a process to block the fat that enters food while frying fish, has officially launched the same type of blocker for fried chicken. Through their sales agent, they are in talks to get their fried chicken on the menus of 50 school districts nationwide, beginning as early as next month.

“Popcorn chicken was taken off school menus because it can’t meet (nutrition) standards,” said Tim Driscoll, Proteus’ chief executive officer. “We can do it.”

Food treated with the blocker, dubbed Nutrilean, looks like fried chicken and tastes like fried chicken. It is, in fact, fried chicken, dipped in hot oil and fried, but it is missing one thing: around half the fat for which fried chicken is so infamous.

Compared with a serving of regular fried chicken, at 200 calories and 80 grams of fat, fried chicken treated with Nutrilean has 160 calories and 30 grams of fat. Keeping the fat content to 30 percent or less is key to making the product appealing to institutions such as school cafeterias, which are held to that standard by the government.

The concept of a fat-blocking protein was developed in 2001 by Proteus founder and chief scientist Stephen Kelleher, who discovered a way to isolate pure protein from fish scraps, turn it into a powder, dissolve it in water and coat fish with it. When the breaded fish was treated, Kelleher found, it blocked the cooking oil from entering the fish.

Proteus executives claim that taste tests have shown food tastes the same as or better than it would without the coating; the fat-blocking shield also serves to keep moisture in, enhancing the meat’s juiciness.

“There are two things we see consistently,” Kelleher said. “The fat goes down and the moisture goes up.”

Since 2002, Proteus has been selling the coating for fish, called NutraPure, to Good Harbor Fillet, a fish processor with an office right next door. The low-fat fried fish has made its way into supermarkets and school systems, including Gloucester’s, and is slated to become the first fried food in Weight Watchers’ frozen foods line next year.

If fish has been such a success, say the executives at Proteus, imagine what they can do with chicken.

Two years ago, Kelleher gained U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration approval for Nutrilean, the chicken protein coating with the same capabilities as NutraPure.

Proteus plans to apply for a Healthy Heart designation from the American Heart Association after it has been tested a bit more, Driscoll said. Currently, the product is meeting the Heart Association’s standards.

Since then, said Kelleher, it’s been “testing, testing and more testing” as chicken processors determine whether Nutrilean will work under their conditions.

Executives are unable to reveal the names of school districts or companies with whom their sales agent, Texas-based Comfort Creek, is negotiating.

“We’re dealing with the who’s who of the chicken world,” Kelleher said.