How School Cafeteria Lunches Differ Around the World
Photograph from erinlanigan on Flickr
Cafeteria lunches are almost universally horrible. In elementary school, I went home sick a few times after "Breakfast for Lunch" day. In high school, the only non-fried options were wilted salads and half-baked cookies. I am certainly not alone in having traumatic school cafeteria memories. The blog School Lunch Talk has been investigating how other countries feed their children.
In French schools, lunchtime is a time to teach students healthful eating habits. A recent lunch consisted of Basque chicken thigh with herbs, red and green bell peppers and olive oil, organic yogurt and an apple. Most interestingly, the meals only cost 6.17 euro per student, but the families pay for, at most, about half of the cost (3.80 euro).
Even with movements to reduce the amount of junk food sold in schools, there is a stark disparity between the lunches offered in the U.S. and those offered in other parts of the world.
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23 Comments:
it horrifies me to look back at the school lunches they used to feed us when i was in school. the worst part is, they never taught us in school how to make good food decisions. or if they did, its rendered completely useless when they say, eat this to be healthy, but then present you with no options in the cafeteria besides ultra processed, super salty, fat laden, nutritionally devoid foods. i sure as heck dont remember them telling us anything (my parents tried, but i was a kid, i didnt fully comprehend the effects of eating unhealthy foods).
Deeberry at 8:36PM on 05/26/09
I don't think anyone disagrees that US public schools can do a better job but "just" 6.17 euros per meal is $8.62 in dollars. My guess is that the current "meal cost " budget in US public schools is less than half that. There is no reason why most parents can't just pack a healthy lunch and send it to school. It's not always necessary for the nanny government to solve every single problem.
trianglefoodie at 9:24PM on 05/26/09
All throughout my school years--from elementary through high school--our cafeterias invariably served the same rectangular frozen cheese pizza, always on Fridays, and always accompanied by an iceberg lettuce salad with neon-orange "French" dressing and (inexplicably) by yellow corn.
Why pizza and corn together? I have no idea, and I've never seen that combination anywhere outside a school cafeteria.
mossr at 10:03PM on 05/26/09
i was always jealous of my lil' sis' lunch menu in hawaii:
Kalua Pork And Spinach, Steamed Rice, Lomi Tomatoes, Pineapple Chunks, Portuguese Sweet Roll, saimin, musubi...
dmarina at 11:28PM on 05/26/09
Trianglefoodie, I'm sure that for many middle class families packing a healthy lunch isn't a problem. But for those in a lower socio-economic class, with much less access to healthy food choices because of both availability and cost, some governmental support is necessary. I think disregarding systemic inequalities and patently dismissing the "nanny government" is a mistake and kind of reductive.
cookingbooks at 11:37PM on 05/26/09
The community college where I went to culinary school served chicken rings. In the words of the fish commercial guys: "That's just not natural."
beth1 at 12:57AM on 05/27/09
I remember getting the rectangle of pizza, so greasy you had to mop it off with a napkin...the burgers that tasted of nothing but soy...the chicken patty that was flabby and brown.
The thing is, we know we can do better. The problem is, lots of cafeteria staff literally don't know how to cook, and even if they did, have no access to proper cooking equipment. Some schools don't even have ovens, for Christ's sake, just microwaves.
Here in the UK, school lunches are free almost everywhere, but it took an extended TV campaign by Jamie Oliver to get them to spend £1 per child. They were spending 50p. You can barely get a chocolate bar for that, much less a meal. Oliver has done yeoman's service on this issue, whatever anyone may think of his 'cheeky chappy' persona.
The sad fact is we've probably lost another generation...the older kids don't want the healthy stuff. But let's start anew...let's serve the younger kids proper food and let them grow up with it, and learn how important it is.
NotAmerican at 1:41AM on 05/27/09
The offerings in the public schools my kids attend is horrific. Hot dogs, hamburgers, processed pizza, processed chicken and "breakfast for lunch" are the typical menu choices. The sad thing is that my wife volunteered in their lunchrooms and said the kids would throw away the healthy portions of the lunches (carrots, green beans, basically any vegetable) so what they're eating at school probably reflects their poor diets at home.
That being said, our sons take packed lunches almost every day.
kmitch218 at 7:57AM on 05/27/09
our son was mesmerized by the idea of school lunch when he started kindergarten this year. he was used to mom always packing lunch. we let him go crazy and buy lunch as much as he wanted and after about 4 days he realized mom made much better lunches and that was the end of it.
i think the nyc school board needs to think more like a restaurant would serve family meal. it would be easy to serve a nutritious and tasty meal on $1.50 per child per day if there were less options but it was centered around a simple main course that was home made. kids don't need hamburgers and pizza to survive, how about some nice roasted chicken or a simple pasta dish.
kapnic at 8:18AM on 05/27/09
Did anyone else have milk in little square plastic sacks with their school lunches or was that just my lovely public school?
annabanannas at 9:03AM on 05/27/09
I hate to bring some bad news, but even a subsidized $5 (3.80 euro) school lunch would be a budget buster for a lot of parents...especially for those with more than 1 kid in school. I think kapnic's idea of less options and a simple main course has merit to reduce the cost of lunch.
Cookingbooks, I think you're being too harsh on Tri'foodie. It's not obivous to me that "some gov't support" would be a good investment in this case. The kids still have to go home and eat. And whatever good eating habits they learn in school will be obliterated by the culture at home. Good eating habits don't start with "gov't support", but with, as Tri'Foodie hinted, parents who care about what their kids eat. If the parents aren't there or don't care, then "gov't support" isn't going help.
Johnny Cash Forever at 9:11AM on 05/27/09
How about packing your kids lunch instead? I almost always brought a lunch with me because even at a young age I knew school lunches were gross. If you as a parent want your kids to eat healthy, don't leave it up to total strangers. Pack your kids the lunch you want them to eat. If you don't want them eating it, don't give them the money. They may still bum some stuff from friends but their intake of vending machine snacks and greasy school pizza will be pretty low without mom's money.
xwafflesx at 9:14AM on 05/27/09
Johnny Cash Forever, of course all good habits start at home and schools can't be expected to make up for bad home environments. But I think we have to be careful about assuming that single parents working multiple jobs with little education simply "don't care." I live in East Harlem, one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York, and we definitely have the highest density of fast food joints around. It's hard to get good produce in our grocery stores, most of it is old and rotting, and I mostly leave the neighborhood to do my shopping. I was just suggesting that systemic inequalities have much to do with the difference in home environments, not a lack of caring on the part of parents.
cookingbooks at 9:40AM on 05/27/09
xwafflesx, some families cannot afford to pack their kid's lunches. They need the school lunches. DCPS generally stays open during snow days and such because otherwise kids won't get to eat lunch (and maybe breakfast too).
Nebagakid at 10:04AM on 05/27/09
I remember attending on base school in Japan growing up and getting yakisoba and teriyaki chicken in the cafeteria - fantastic! Much to my horror the lunches at the public schools in the states consisted mainly of cardboard pizzas and nuggets. Had to start packing a lunch after that.
annabanannas - What was up with the milk in bags? Didn't see that until I went to public school in the states. Milk does not belong in a clear Capri Sun container!
mag13 at 10:32AM on 05/27/09
I actually preferred school lunches to what my mom packed. Of course, kids love fatty, salty food like mac n cheese, pizza, and cheeseburgers, and of course, breakfast for lunch. I think the biggest problem with the school lunch program in the US is that the gov't sees it more as a great way to get rid of surplus food rather than a way to both feed kids and teach them about nutrition and cooking. As for the why don't parents just pack their kids lunches argument, there are three things working against that: lack of money, time, and education. Other commenters have touched on the first two. As for the third, how are parents supposed to know what to pack for their kids if they grew up on industrial food too?
emgroff at 11:30AM on 05/27/09
Nebagakid and Emgroff, yes. Exactly.
cookingbooks at 11:49AM on 05/27/09
I went to an international school in Japan where we had mostly very good food. I think most of it was cooked at the school. The curry rice was always one of the best things they had.
Something I remember is, one day it was spaghetti and meat sauce, the next sloppy joes and then the third day "Italian delight" (a baked pasta dish with the meat sauce, corn and processed cheese). The spaghetti was good, sloppy joes were ok, the Italian delight - not so much. They sure knew how to stretch the sauce out.
I went to an American high school for two years and have to admit, really liked the rectangular cardboard pizza!
caitlinb at 12:01PM on 05/27/09
My son's daycare provides lunch, but I still do my best to pack lunch for him. There's no stove top in their kitchen, so there's no actual cooking going on. I'd him not eat mini corn dogs and chicken nuggets everyday. Even still, somedays I just don't get around to it, and he ends up eating whatever they're having that day.
On a lighter note, if you Google Image "school lunches suck," my favorite carrot soup on my blog is the fifth result. Not exactly the advertisement I'm looking for (ha).
meleyna at 2:35PM on 05/27/09
Oddly, perhaps, I don't remember disliking school lunches.....forbidden fruit I suppose. I did have an issue with the college, when I lived in the dorms my second year. A tray of beef would be all large veins. Cake was a favorite, though, and there were, over the course of the year, some seriously expanding backsides.
milesdga at 2:51PM on 05/27/09
Yes folks there are always going to be kids that need help from the taxpayers or charities to get a good meal. (our PTA supported a program that sent backpacks home with kids on the weekends filled with food so that kids on F&R had something to eat before they got back to school on Monday). The point I'm making is that we as a country can not maintain the attitude that we have to look to the taxpayers to solve every single problem. Most (not all) parents can make the choice to feed their families healthy foods. And for some of the rest (not all) it may mean making a choice between 100 cable channels, an iphone, a flatscreen tv or sending their child to school with a healthy meal.
trianglefoodie at 3:04PM on 05/27/09
You're right, trianglefoodie, if only all of those working single parents (and hell, even families with both parents working) would stop spending all of their below-living-wages on iphones and flatscreen tv's, they could give their kids an apple for lunch and not ask society for a thing. That was a very insightful and nuanced argument. I feel enlightened.
cookingbooks at 3:23PM on 05/27/09
Aww, I was able to download menus from my hometown school lunch association's website!!
Looks like they are incorporating more whole grains compared to what we had many many years ago, but menus look pretty similar.
examples:
June 1
-soy bean and pork stew
-seaweed salad
-table rolls
-milk
-cantaloupe
(644kcal, 26.1g protein)
June 4
-hijiki(seaweed) brown rice
-fried sardines in a marinade
-miso soup
-milk (milk and Japanese food don't go well together! I used to hate it)
(649kcal, 23.7g protein)
hmw0029 at 5:21PM on 05/27/09