The Jaguars' high-traffic cafeteria used to be a snack trap, characterized by unmarked sugars, hidden calories and hard-to-see preservatives. With its cookie buffet and pizza day, the players ate it up, never stopping to think the low-grade fuel they were pumping into their bodies could be making the team sputter. Then Anita Nall Richesson, an Olympic swimmer turned holistic nutrition specialist, began to police the players' diets when her husband, Luke, was hired last season as the Jaguars' strength and conditioning coach. Many factors are feeding into the resurgence of the Jaguars, who host the Oakland Raiders (6-6) on Sunday. They are 7-5 and lead the AFC South nearly a year after losing their last four games by an average of 10 1/2 points to finish 7-9, the division's worst record. The team has been infused with young blood -- 24 of the Jaguars were not in the league in 2008. It has also benefited from the unexpected mediocrity of its division, epitomized by the Indianapolis Colts, who are 7-6 after reaching the Super Bowl last season. Quarterback David Garrard and running back Maurice Jones-Drew are having marvelous seasons. Garrard is tied with New England's Tom Brady for the conference lead with a 66.8 percent completion rate, and Jones-Drew has strung together five 100-yard rushing games, including one for 186 yards on 31 carries last Sunday at Tennessee. Players like tight end Marcedes Lewis and defensive tackle Terrance Knighton changed their diets and helped alter the team's chemistry. Under Nall Richesson's supervision, Lewis lost his taste for pineapple upside-down cake and soda, and started craving salads and feasting on red-zone defenses. He has a career-high eight touchdown catches and 41 receptions. 'I would credit at least half my production to the work I've done with Anita on nutrition and Luke in the weight room,' Lewis said. Jack Del Rio, who is in his eighth season as the Jaguars' coach, said: 'Luke and his wife have done a great job helping our guys fuel themselves. What our guys are putting in their system is giving them more energy.' Nall Richesson, a breaststroker, won gold, silver and bronze medals at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics in Spain at age 16. She then endured several years of poor health that compromised her performance in the pool. Her search for answers for the illnesses that stumped her doctors sent her down the path of examining food as not only fuel, but also medicine and led to her business, PhenomeNall Nutrition. One day last week, the 5-foot-5 Nall Richesson, who is as slender as a carrot stick, bounded into the cafeteria to examine the lunch fare, including gluten-free pasta and a red sauce with no artificial preservatives. The cookie buffet is gone, and in its place are fruit and gluten-free snack bars. At the smoothie bar, which has fresh fruit and honey but no sugar or dairy, a player was reading the ingredients on the cartons of coconut milk and almond milk. He is trying to gain weight and was looking to see which option contained more calories. 'When I see a guy reading a label, I get so excited,' Nall Richesson said. 'In football I don't think there's been a light shone on nutrition,' she added. 'There's a huge focus on weight, but the traditional thought process has been how big can you get in any way, shape or form. 'The challenge with these players is how can they fuel their bodies so they're energetic and exuberant on the field without inviting the potential health hazards of what being big can bring.' Lewis, 26, had never given much thought to what he ate. He was, in his words, a reckless eater, until he had a food sensitivity test and discovered his body has an intolerance to many of his favorite foods, including pineapple. Dining out one night last week at a steakhouse near his downtown apartment, Lewis was careful about his order. He passed up steak for roasted chicken and asked for a side of green beans served dry, without butter. Lewis also ordered a shrimp appetizer and a sweet potato dish but passed on desert, eschewed soda for a glass of water with a slice of lemon, and limited himself to one piece of French bread instead of devouring the whole loaf, as he said he used to do. 'I recover faster,' said Lewis, who is carrying 254 pounds on his 6-6 frame, down from 275 at the start of the season. 'I'm running better. I have more energy. And I'm still strong. This is Week 14 of the season and I feel good. That is ridiculous.' Lewis, a former UCLA star from Southern California, did more than change his diet to improve his performance. He used to escape to Los Angeles immediately after the season to be near his mother, stepfather and three younger siblings, with whom he is close. The last two offseasons, Lewis rededicated himself to football by remaining here so he could work out regularly with Garrard, a sacrifice far harder than forsaking sweets. Knighton, one of the 24 players on the Jaguars with less than three years' pro experience, is the heaviest player on the team at 336 pounds, and his weight used to hold him back. He was given the nickname Pot Roast as a rookie last year after he woke a teammate while ordering the meal during a team flight. Such comfort foods no longer appeal to Knighton, 24, who has also given up the ranch dressing and fried foods that he used to fill up on. Bringing the same discipline to the field that he has to the table, he is making a meal out of quarterbacks with four sacks. Last season the Jaguars had a franchise-low 14 sacks. Knighton's mother, Rochelle, and his three younger brothers came from Hartford to live with him, and he enjoyed a few too many meals of his mother's macaroni and cheese during the offseason. At the start of training camp, Knighton weighed nearly 350 pounds and became so winded he could not complete some drills. So Nall Richesson took Knighton's mother grocery shopping and showed her how to pick more nutritious foods and prepare them. Twice a week, Knighton passes up his mother's meals to eat a dinner cooked by Nall Richesson. 'I've tried vegetables I couldn't even pronounce,' Knighton said. 'Like bok choy. That's become one of my favorites.' He added: 'In the fourth quarter of games now, I don't feel gassed at all. I don't have to come out to catch my breath. I'm fine.' Along with the fatigue, gone are the migraines that plagued Knighton from the time he was in middle school until Nall Richesson began overhauling his diet last year. He said he sometimes played in games while in excruciating pain from the headaches. 'I actually liked when I got hit,' he said, 'because the migraine would go away for 10 to 20 seconds.' Since Nall Richesson rid his diet of monosodium glutamate, a common food additive, he has not had a single migraine, Knighton said. Instead of seeing stars, he is on his way to becoming one. For all the Jaguars, that is food for thought. 