3 months after disaster, kids in northeast Japan still not getting full school lunches.

[AsahinaKimi]

Takata Prefectural High School, where Motoko Mori had worked, is pictured in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, on April 15. (Mainichi)

Primary and junior high schools in 11 municipalities in the three prefectures hardest hit by the March 11 disaster -- Miyagi, Iwate and Fukushima -- still cannot provide their students with full school lunches, the Mainichi has discovered.

Many school boards in Japan use centralized lunch kitchens to supply their schools with meals. A number of these lunch kitchens were damaged or destroyed in the earthquake and tsunami and have yet to reopen, leaving the schools they served dependent on non-governmental organization (NGO) support or boxed lunch delivery companies to provide students their midday meal. These stopgaps, however, have raised health and nutrition concerns.

Meanwhile, restarting the lunch kitchens will be no easy task for municipalities devastated by the March disaster, and the return of hot school lunches in these places appears a long way off.

One of these municipalities is Higashimatsushima in Miyagi Prefecture, where the international NGO Save the Children began providing schools with side dishes in June. Lunch at local Akai Elementary School on June 10 consisted of rice balls, boiled eggs and vegetable juice. One second-grader seemed pleased with the meal, telling the Mainichi, "I like boiled eggs." However, while the improvised lunch may have got smiles from the kids, no one could say it was balanced or plentiful. Restoring the city's school lunch kitchen to full output by the end of the school term, meanwhile, appears a very difficult task.

more..
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110628p2a00m0na011000c.html