School lunchs in other countries.

[elfs]

One of the things that I've found recently, in my job search, and for no reason I can fathom, is School Lunch Talk, a website about, well, school lunches. One of the things they've been discussing recently is school lunch programs in other countries. Here's Japan:

Japanese schoolchildren eat lunch in the classroom, and students take turns serving the meal and cleaning up afterward. Their teacher eats the same food with them - typically rice, soup, fish and milk - and pays close attention to manners. Virtually all students eat the school lunch, as they're usually not allowed to bring their own food.

Lunch in Japanese schools is part of the curriculum just like math or science.

And here's France:

Basque chicken thigh with herbs, red and green bell peppers and olive oil; couscous; organic yogurt and an apple. For snack, they had organic bread, butter, hot chocolate and fruit.

The French take school lunch seriously. The mid-day meal is supposed to teach students good manners, good taste and the elements of good nutrition. Recommendations from the French government assert that eating habits are shaped from a young age and that schools should ensure children make good food choices despite media influence and personal tendencies.

And Italy:

On a recent Friday, students in the northern city of Piacenza ate zucchini risotto and mozzarella, tomato and basil salad. Tomorrow they're getting pesto lasagna, a selection of cheeses and a platter of garden vegetables. Meat only shows up on menus only once or twice a week, and it's usually not the main course.

Italy views lunch as an integral part of a student's education. School meals are supposed to teach children about local traditions and instill a taste for the regional food. To that end, Italian law allows schools to consider more than just price when making contracts with meal providers. Schools can take into account location, culture and how foods fit into the curriculum.

That's a pretty impressive set of distinctions between school lunch in other countries and the school lunch that Omaha and I had the other day: USDA Cutter quality burgers, iceberg lettuce and "creamy vinagrette" dressing, unripened watermelon, guar gum-laden cookies, and a half pint of milk.

In the US, the tendency has been to view the cafeteria as a necessity: we have to feed the kids to keep them from collapsing somewhere in the afternoon, and we have to provide a cafeteria (and government money) to feed the children from poor families. There are abstract nutritional posters and the classrooms handle "nutrition" seperately from the actual act of feeding the kids. Reading through these examples from other countries, though, I know how poorly we're failing our kids now.