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‘Treating school meals as a public good means fighting for systems of food
preparation, sourcing and education.’ Photograph: Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty
Images
View image in fullscreen
‘Treating school meals as a public good means fighting for systems of food
preparation, sourcing and education.’ Photograph: Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty
Images
OpinionSchool meals



ORGANIC CHEESE AND FREE LUNCH FOR ALL: WHAT THE US CAN LEARN FROM OTHER NATIONS
ABOUT BETTER SCHOOL MEALS

Jennifer Gaddis and Sarah A Robert



Brazil, Finland and South Korea have figured out how to pay for nutritious meals
for students. The US can, too

Fri 31 May 2024 12.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 31 May 2024 14.13 EDT
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29
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In a 2015 documentary, the film-maker Michael Moore cheekily suggested the US
invade France because its school lunches are amazing.

School food culture in France is indeed enviable. Menus sometimes include beets
with vinaigrette as the seasonal salad of the day, organic beef lasagne for the
main course, followed by organic camembert for the cheese course and a pear for
dessert.



The school community values meals and those who prepare them as contributing to
students’ education. Meals are typically made from scratch using fresh
ingredients. And joy is central to the experience of eating together. That said,
the French system isn’t a perfect model: France doesn’t have a national school
lunch program and parents are billed directly for the cost of meals.

Why are kids being forced to eat lunch in silence?

Read more


In the near-decade since Moore’s film, there have been a lot of improvements in
what the typical US student might encounter in the cafeteria. Thanks in large
part to school food fights at local, state and national levels, more students
have access to free school meals than ever before, schools across the country
are cooking more recipes from scratch and local farmers are supplying more of
the food that students eat. However, these changes remain precarious or subject
to political and economic priorities. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

In our new book, Transforming School Food Politics Around the World, we discuss
how to successfully challenge and transform public school food programs to
emphasize care, justice and sustainability, with insights from eight countries
in the global north and south. Ultimately, we argue for the importance of school
food as a public good.

What the book’s contributors taught us is that rather than invade enviable
school cafeterias, we should learn from them and collectively seek to apply four
lessons in the US school food system.


LESSON ONE: SCHOOL MEALS SHOULD BE FREE FOR ALL STUDENTS



The national Healthy School Meals for All movement took shape during the
Covid-19 pandemic after the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which
administers the National School Lunch Program, issued waivers that allowed
schools to serve meals free of charge for all K-12 students – no more
determining students’ eligibility based on their household income. Despite the
popularity of this temporary program, Congress voted to end the USDA waivers in
June 2022 and return to the old model.

Only eight states, including California and Vermont, provide free school meals
for all K-12 students. But these state-level wins bring the US one step closer
to government programs in every other region of the world that provide full
funding for universal free school meal programs at the national level.

View image in fullscreen
Students eat lunch at a school in Espoo, Finland. Photograph: Miikka Pirinen/The
Guardian

School lunch has been free for all students in Finland since the beginning of
its national program in 1948. In Brazil, children’s right to food is protected
in the constitution and a 2009 amendment made meals free for all students.
Likewise, in 2011, South Korea changed its existing program, which began in
1953, to provide universal free school lunch to all students instead of
continuing to subsidize free meals only for students from poor households (as
the US continues to do).

Covering all or most of the cost of universal free school meals is smart policy:
universal free school meals have a positive effect on students’ behavior and
attendance, mental health, nutrition and food security, all of which improve
their academic achievement.

But it’s not enough to simply provide students with free meals. Treating school
meals as a public good means fighting for systems of food preparation, sourcing
and education that make meals more enjoyable, healthful, environmentally
sustainable and beneficial for local food and farm economies.


LESSON TWO: FOOD SHOULD BE COOKED (NOT JUST REHEATED) IN SCHOOL KITCHENS



Here in the US, the prevalence of ultra-processed foods in schools is a
perennial topic of school food politics. In April, the advocacy division of
Consumer Reports asked the USDA to remove Lunchables from school lunch menus
after their analysis revealed concerning levels of heavy metals, salt and food
additives in the meal kits.

Meanwhile, some schools across the country are voluntarily screening the foods
they purchase to ensure they do not contain ingredients of concern like
artificial colors, preservatives and sweeteners. And in California, advocates
have introduced state legislation to ban some synthetic food dyes found in
school meals.

All of these advocacy efforts point to a common concern: US schools have long
been tied to big food companies and the processed foods they craft to meet the
USDA’s school nutrition standards. But rather than following the US model of
dishing out pre-made “kid foods” like frozen chicken nuggets, countries as
diverse as Brazil, Finland, India, Japan and South Korea have all prioritized
scratch cooking within their national school lunch programs. Even students
attending urban schools in megacities like São Paulo, Mumbai, Tokyo and Seoul
are served healthy, locally prepared meals that reflect their cultures.

View image in fullscreen
Students eat lunch at school on the outskirts of Hyderabad, India. Photograph:
Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images

We can see from global examples that the logistical challenges of cooking from
scratch can be overcome. Meals are typically cooked onsite in school kitchens or
prepared in a large central kitchen and distributed in insulated containers
right before lunchtime. And we know from research conducted in the US that
scratch-cooked school meals have a host of benefits related to students’ health
and academic achievement, local agriculture and the environment. We need to hold
our schools and the federal government accountable for making scratch cooking
the norm.


LESSON THREE: LOCAL AND SUSTAINABLE PURCHASING SHOULD BE MANDATORY AND STRONGLY
SUPPORTED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT



Since the pandemic, the USDA has ramped up financial support for local and
regional food systems at the national level, including providing schools with
local food-purchasing assistance funds and granting $4.8m to foster partnerships
for local agriculture and nutrition transformation in schools. Then, in April,
the USDA issued new school meal standards that will encourage schools to
purchase more local foods.

These are promising changes. Buying local – let alone organic – food is not a
requirement for schools participating in US school meal programs. Only a small
fraction of the multibillion-dollar school meal budget goes to build shorter,
more equitable and environmentally sustainable supply chains. This is a missed
opportunity.

In Brazil, for example, schools have been required since 2009 to spend at least
30% of their budget on ingredients sourced from small-scale or family farms that
use organic or agro-ecological production methods. The city of São Paulo has set
an even more ambitious goal: by 2026, the municipal government aims to source
all school food ingredients from such producers and serve 100% organic school
lunches by 2030. This is the direct result of federal law and increased
investment: in March, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
increased federal funding for school meals by about 35%.

View image in fullscreen
Students eat lunch in their classroom at an elementary school in Daegu, South
Korea. Photograph: Yonhap/EPA-EFE

The Seoul metropolitan government in South Korea has moved toward this type of
transformation, after several decades of activism in support of food sovereignty
and against the privatization of school meals. With the enactment of South
Korea’s universal free and eco-friendly school lunch policy in 2011, Seoul
needed new infrastructure for sourcing and distributing ingredients that met the
newly established “eco-friendly” criteria. The Seoul metropolitan government
built Orbon, a publicly funded distribution hub for eco-friendly food, which
supplied ingredients to 75% of the city’s schools in 2021.



Simply put, what ends up on students’ plates is the direct result of food
politics and government priorities. In the fight to fix America’s broken food
system, schools can meet ambitious procurement goals when legally required to do
so and given strong financial support.


LESSON FOUR: MEALTIMES SHOULD BE JOYFUL, CARE-CENTERED EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES

School mealtimes in the US are too often treated as a necessary evil, crammed in
between more “important” learning times and spaces. In some schools, the
pressure to maximize instructional time is so intense that students are
subjected to 15-minute silent lunch periods. Earlier in the Guardian’s School
food fights series, April McGreger, a parent of a child who attended such a
school, argued: “A school’s success should be measured not just by academic
offerings and test scores, but how well it nurtures citizens of the world.”

Lunchtimes in Finland and Japan – two countries with world-renowned public
education systems – are convivial. Students are given the time to prioritize
themselves, care for others and care for the environment through the daily
experience of eating and learning together. In both countries, food is treated
as an important academic subject and a community-building experience with
students, parents and community members involved in decision-making, for
example, about menus.

View image in fullscreen
First-grade students eat lunch at an elementary school in Tokyo, Japan.
Photograph: Toru Hanai/Reuters

In the Japanese school lunch system, for example, children learn communal care
by serving and cleaning up after lunchtime. This “chore” helps them value the
labor of the many workers who feed and educate them. Students compost their food
scraps, break down their milk cartons for recycling and generally strive to
minimize waste.



These activities were codified into law in 2009 when Japan’s national school
lunch act was revised to include new objectives that specified school lunch
should “enliven school life and encourage an active, social and considerate
spirit” and “further appreciation of the gifts of nature that support us, foster
respect of life and nature and encourage a spirit of environmental
conservation”.

This is, perhaps, one of the most important lessons of our book: school
mealtimes are not a “distraction” in the middle of the school day, but an
invaluable opportunity to educate young people about how to live healthy lives
and contribute to the common good.

Providing exceptional school meals for millions of US children won’t come
without a collective struggle, and our analysis of school food politics around
the world reminds us to raise the bar in what we’re fighting for.

 * Jennifer Gaddis is an associate professor in civil society and community
   studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 * Sarah A Robert is an associate professor in the graduate school of education
   at the University at Buffalo.

Explore more on these topics
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 * US education
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