Wednesday was the last day of school lunches for the boys.
Have I told you yet about the school lunch program here? The school that the boys attend has a full hot lunch program. I am not even sure if you can bring your own brown bag lunch, I never really asked once I heard about the hot lunches that they served.
They have an actual chef with a full kitchen – Luano. He is something of superhero amongst the kids. Quite often, after the kids are served, they will bang on the table with their silverware chanting “Luano! Luano! Luano!” like they did this last day, until he comes out and makes an appearance. Then he always hams it up and does sort of a catwalk parade like a celebrity, to the cheers of the children.
The cafeteria is very different than the “lunch area” the boys are familiar with from their school in the U.S. At the school here, each grade has an assigned table and the teachers of each class sit at the head of the table, with the children on either side. Once they sit down, they speak appropriately and politely because the teacher is at the table. The teacher will correct each child’s table manners, tell them to eat more, sit up straight, don’t talk with their mouth full, and will not allow them to have dessert if they have not finished their main course. The boys tell me that the teacher raps the back of her knife on the table when the children get loud or out of control.
In addition to the chef, there are four women who also work in the school cafeteria. They wear an all-white uniform, white apron and white cap. They walk around and serve the children each course and offer up seconds to those who want it. Meals are served on china with real silverware, napkins and glassware. Water is served from big glass pitchers.
The boys are certainly going to miss the lunches here. I loved it when they came home so excited to tell me what they had for lunch that day. To listen to them describe it in such vivid detail, I knew they were truly enjoying their meals. It always sounded so delicious.
They receive a four course lunch – Primi, Secondi, Contorni and Dolce. The meals are as impressive as any restaurant around. The Primi might be polenta with boar ragu, risotto with pancetta and peas, stracchino cheese and bread or a simple pasta pomodoro. The secondi has been everything from fish to roasted chicken or chicken cutlets, veal steak or veal cutlets, bistecca, and of course, the dreaded slab of mortadella which Dante hates but Augusto loves. Bread, salad, vegetables and usually a potato of sort are served at every meal and bowls of fruit are always on the table. Desserts are things like cakes, gelato or panna cotta.
None of it is frozen, packaged, or processed. Everything is made fresh, daily from scratch. The food is real, it’s fresh and it’s locally grown and locally butchered. I see our local butcher deliver to the school weekly.
There are no choices; the lunch that day is whatever the chef has prepared. And most of the kids, not having ever been introduced to processed or junk food, and used to the type and quality of meals here, eat it all up, without any problems. There are no chicken nuggets and no corndogs. There is no McDonalds’ day, no Pizza Hut day and certainly no Taco Bell day.
Here are some interesting statistics that I read from the School Nutrition Association (a US organization):
According to the SNA survey, in the US, more than one-third of schools dish out restaurant-branded items for lunch. Among districts with over 25,000 students, 50 percent served brand-name fast-food: McDonalds, Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Subway and Chick-fil-A are popular, as are Little Caesar’s, Arby’s, Panda Express, Dairy Queen, KFC and Taco Bell.
The SNA survey also reported on the number of schools that cook from scratch. Considering the above, it’s not surprising that over 80 percent of schools cook fewer than half of their entrees from scratch. These numbers also show that almost half of schools use their commodity dollars mainly for processed foods.
However, Italy sees schools as a vehicle to support and guarantee the promotion of organic agricultural production and the traditional farming of ‘quality’ food products. In fact, Italy has a law that calls for organic and local products, as well as typical and traditional products to be served in schools, hospitals and other public institutions.
Italy, embracing food as always, views lunch as an essential and vital part of a student’s education. School meals are to teach children about local and traditional foods and encourage tastes for the regional customs and way of life. They also use school meals as an educational tool to instill proper eating habits and good manners.
The United States doesn’t have that kind of food tradition. We don’t take pride in our cuisine like the Italians and some other European countries do. Food and food quality just doesn’t seem very high on our list of priorities.
This all makes for school lunches that are about as different as it gets from those in the U.S. Let’s face it, how children eat lunch in US schools is a reflection of the way we eat in America.
Why is it that a kid in Italy is willing to eat a lunch of Polenta with wild boar ragu, veal scallopine with lemon and olive oil and a salad, but our children in the US will not. How is it that children in another country will eat a healthy variety but in the US, children will not?
Is it perhaps because we have allowed them to eat processed foods with sugars and preservatives all along and now they don’t want anything better. They don’t know anything better?
Our children are eating from a toxic food buffet of chicken nuggets, tacos, hot dogs, corn dogs, french fries, orange-dyed Cheetos and Doritos, juice boxes and those surreal colored drink products. What the hell is that blue stuff anyway?
Those same kids, unfamiliar with anything that remotely resembles real food are unwilling to eat nutritious foods and as a result school lunch offerings have changed to accommodate their tastes.
It used to be that children sat down and ate home-cooked meals with their families, and that’s what they expected for lunch at school. Schools served stew, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, lasagna and Salisbury steak because that’s what students were used to.
Today, it’s about convenience and speed, eating on the run and fast food and microwaves. I recently read somewhere that if any given population of school-age children were polled; over 30% will have eaten fast food that day.
Why with something as important as diet and nutrition, are we willing to let our kids down and take the easy route? We are failing our children with their dietary future. We are churning out and creating a generation of young eaters with a taste for high fructose corn syrup, sugar, salt and trans-fats.
Healthy eating must start at home. Children need to be exposed to wholesome and nourishing foods; they need to be offered a variety of different foods. We need to ensure that eating habits are shaped from a young age and that schools help children make good food choices despite media influence and personal tendencies.
I think we could learn a lesson from the Italian lunch program – children will eat high-quality and nutritious food when presented with it and it is familiar. And it’s not that hard to have real food, fresh food – unprocessed and made from scratch. Sadly, I think as Americans, many of us have lost that connection with our food.
So how much does all that wonderful, made from scratch, organic and locally grown school lunch cost? Just €2.85! For that price and for all of that delicious food, I wish I could take my lunch there too!
You can read about buying lunch tickets here
