Organic cheese and free lunch for all: what the US can learn from other nations about better school meals

[Jilly_in_VA]

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.

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.

https://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/article/2024/may/31/free-healthy-school-lunches

This country is so focused on useless "testing" that they neglect everything else.

[Think. Again.]

1. I've never understood how...

...we can legally demand children be confined in any given place for more than 4 hours at a time, and not be expected to feed them (not sell them food, feed them) in a properly nutritious way.

[jimfields33]

2. I never had a lunch provided in grade school or high school

We were required to bring a lunch box and eventually a brown bag. I graduated in 1987. For snack in grade school they sold chocolate or white milk, pretzel rods and munchos. Nothing else offered. I bought a dollar everyday to buy them. Weird the things you remember.

[msongs]

3. the purpose of the school lunch program is buying welfare commodities. my elementary schools made from scratch

all their meals. nothing fancy like France just basic good stuff. and the home made yeast rolls with butter were fabulous.

[Phoenix61]

5. Mine made home made cinnamon rolls... they were to die for good. nt

[SarahD]

6. Is that in the MAGA platform?

When I was a kid, we supported farmers by buying surplus farm commodities and turning them into free school lunches. It was pure socialism, of course, but we just thought of it as something nice for kids and farmers. Maybe the MAGA fanatics should think about the things we used to do that actually made America great: free public education and free school lunches, not religious propaganda in the classroom.

[erronis]

4. If there's a way for Vulture Capitalists to make money off of little children

they'll be there offering ultra-processed, pasteurized cheeze food product (Velveeta).

Healthiness to the children be damned. Making money is the goal.

And they have wormed their ways into the state boards of education and local school districts. Money gets access.