School Food Around The World

Mike-O

Mike-O

Active member


What are kids eating in schools around the world? I read an interesting article that gives a view of a few countries' food offerings for children and decided to share. Food is important and some of us take it for granted, let's be happy for what we get.

What kind of food did you eat in school?

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Helsinki, Finland. Pietari Halme, 8, is in Second Grade in Meilahti Primary School. Beetroot, grated carrots and vegetable pasta, with a side of two slices of bread and a glass of milk. Pietari's favorite food is salad. School food in Finland is free to all students.

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Stockholm, Sweden. Noel Bodin, 9, is eating macaroni and meat sauce with salad and tomato, with a side of crispbread. There were also options for spinach sauce or falafel in curry sauce for vegetarians. Noel's favorite foods are tacos and pancakes. "The worst foods are soups with veggies in 'em", he says. School food in Sweden is free to all students.

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Bogotá, Colombia. Juan Rubiano Palma, 13, is eating lentals, rice, fried bananas and meat. The salad has beans, tomatoes, eggs, carrots and olives. For drink he has mango juice and for dessert a granadilla and ice cream. Juan is very happy with his school food, although he doesn't always finish his food.

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Bangkok, Thailand. Nanthawan Jamsai, 12, is eating chicken and coconut soup, rice and seasoned pork, with a tapioca jello for dessert. "Mom makes it spicier", Nanthawan comments. The food costs him roughly 100 euros annually. His (or her?) favorite food is a spicy papaya salad called Somtam.

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Washington, USA. Maria, 11, is having a chicken burger with barbecue sauce for lunch. On the side, broccoli, carrots and orange, with milk for drink. She pays 1,20 euros for the lunch. Maria likes school lunches: "The only bad foods are spinach and lasagne. Cheese pizza is the best."

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Monrovia, Liberia. Samba Kollie, 12, goes to St. Peter's lutheran school. The school doesn't offer food for the students. Samba buys his food from a kiosk near the school, today - noodles, green potato sauce and a boiled egg. Samba thinks the food is OK. "Sometimes I'll have two eggs if I'm really hungry."

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St. Petersburg, Russia. Junona Filimonova, 8, goes to an unnamed school. It only has a number, #238. She is eating rice and chicken sauce, for a starter she had cabbage soup. Coming from an extended family, she gets breakfast, lunch and sometimes a snack for free. Other children have to pay 1,10 euros for their food.

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London, England. 7-year-old Joshua Thorn's lunch is made by her mother. The lunch box has two whole grain sandwiches, grapes, carrots and fruit cake. Joshua could get lunch from school, but it would cost him 2,50 euros. Almost all of his friends bring their own food to school. Joshua think the best part of his lunch is the cake baked by her mother.

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Unknown. This one had the same caption as the Liberia picture and it wasn't corrected yet, so I don't know where it's from. Either way, doesn't look too appetizing... Looks like some porridge with some Kellogs-type cracker snack on the side.

Here's the original article:

http://www.hs.fi/ruoka/artikkeli/Mit%C3%A4+muut+lapset+sy%C3%B6v%C3%A4t/1135270361393

 
never really thought about it but thats really interesting

funny to see how much healthier everyone eats than us canada/usa folks with our burgers and fries. i know healthy stuff is available but still.
 
Our school food is cheap and it looks gross. Doesn't taste so bad but I prefer bringing my lunch
 
My children's lunch program is a lot different than when I was in school. It was typical burgers, chicken patties and nuggets. Now they have teriyaki chicken days, oven roast chicken, different types of pizza Fridays (rather than your general cheese or roni), real nachos w/ fixin's, panini's, stuffed shells, always with veggies/fruit and dessert. They also don't serve pink milk which is my favorite part. They also have Try it Tuesday where they introduce a food they might not normally try and that's fantastic.

So while I think there can be improvements quality wise, I'm not unhappy and I do pack their lunch on the chicken nugget/patty/really gross days.

I was not unfamiliar with other countries serving their children quality meals and its nice to see America (at least where I live) take the steps for improvement.
 
you're retarded if you think american food is boring based on what they serve at school. that or you really need to step outside the box and expand your horizons. american food is amazing.
 
Try It Tuesday sounds like a good idea, but I can't help but laugh a bit how it's such a buzz word :) In Finland it's just plain old, boring "New Food Day".

Did you, or do your kids now, have to finish their plates? When I was in elementary school, you had to eat everything from the plate that you put on it, or else you couldn't go outside and play during lunch recess. My teacher was very strict with that, at least.
 
*school food is boring, my mistake

Yes i know. I've eaten a lot of different types of food and know that in a lot of ways it isn't boring.

BUT my school's food is so regulated for the fat, sugar and calorie content that we don't have anything to eat. Plus the fact that my school doesn't have an overly excessive amount of money the quality of the vegetables is pretty weak. So your reduced to eating a cheese quesadilla or a giant plate of pasta. And if it's a day that they're selling something that just looks completely disgusting you're reduced to eating a bagel.(which is good because they buy them from a local store that sells them, but it's still really unhealthy to eat JUST a bagel for lunch) and I'm in no way a picky eater so that doesn't have anything to do with it.
 
Let me tell you, I am not sure that they force the children to finish their plates, but I'm sure they do as they are not itching to get outside. One of the best things my school did, which I was going to bring up at a Board of Education meeting before I realized it was already in place, is that they go to recess first. Then come in an eat their lunches. They've released all of their energy and built up an appetite. Lunch time is relax and enjoy meal time and I have heard, that they really do. And they go back to class calm and cool. I love it.
 
Okay, sounds like a good experiment.

I think it was already in 3rd grade, when we began having shifts for the food process - two kids from class would fetch the food stroller, two would hand out the food, two would take the stroller back and two would work in the kitchen washing all the dishes from most of the classes. Back then I hated it, but it was definitely a good experience to bring kids into the school food process, and it made me respect the kitchen staff's work much more and try to be more clean and faster and such during lunch time.
 
Yes, the kids do have rotations in helping with the lunch trays in making sure they are clean and sliding them through the doors to be washed. For elementary school, at least K-3, that's enough. No need to burden them with more imo. They do chores at home.

And there is no handing out food as they have a typical lunch line. I feel making them serve would waste valuable school time. But it sounds like it worked well for your school.
 
Yes, of course, school size is also an issue, my elementary was pretty small, 12 classes, two for each year with about 20 students each, so we didn't even need a cafeteria and ate in class.

Now that I actually started thinking about food, I remember one day when we had meetwursti, which is a type of salami, back then made of horse meat. Then this girl in my class, who was a huge horse/pony freak as everything she wore or owned had something to do with ponies and she couldn't stop talking about them, and now she was eating it, so I went over to her, asking "Do you like your meetvursti?" and she said "Yeah, it's really good!" and I told her "You know, it's actually made of horses. You're eating horse."

To which she answered by spitting it out and ran away crying, possibly traumatized. I think I made a lot of girls run away crying for shit like this, lol.
 
K for kindergarten. age 5 .. 3 third grade (realy 4th year in schools)

the term K through 12 would be the education system that takes you from age 5 to 18

my food in school was always garbage.. fucking terable. i ate it maybe 6 times in elementery (k-5) never in middle school and then Highschool came and we had fucking taco bell i my school for freshman year. then it got janky. and i would maybe buy a slice of pizza or just a juice to go along with my bring from home lunch. it was much better then eating at school. i would make my self a sandwich or some left overs from dinner. but in high school we go to the market and get deli and such or drive to fast food. or really good mexican food.

now kids in the same school have such better food.. so jelly
 
Ah, okay. I guess I was wrong in my mind thinking it could have something to do with dogs/pets in class for the children to take care of (K-9 unit).

In my rotation, elementary school was high quality and healthy, junior high was pretty terrible in quality although they did try to cater to everyone's needs with what they had at hand, but in high school the food was the fucking bomb, but because I scheduled my studies to go skiing a lot I hardly ate there.
 
I don't really have a clue what the middle & highschoolers eat. I imagine its the same menu as the elementary school, that's how it was back then. Not sure if its changed.
 
let me tell you :). i'm a senior in high school. I only eat at school twice a week but when i do, i bring my own lunch. My packed lunch usually consists of a turkey or tuna sandwich on wheat bread, a bunch of carrots and a big apple with a water. But our school serves a huge variety of food. They have a pasta bar where you can pick and choose what you want in a pasta bowl. They have a pizza bar with a couple different flavors. They have a salad bar with soup also. They also have a wrap station where you can pick and choose whatever you want in a wrap. There is also a sandwich bar. And lastly they have the "plate lunch" which is usually things like hamburger, chicken nuggets, pasta with nasty sides and a milk. but plate lunch is free so many people choose to eat it.
 
I snapped this pic about two weeks ago.

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It's "Ärtsoppa och pannkakor" (peasoup and pancakes). Typical Swedish dish, traditionally served on Thursdays, but is good every day of the week. Delicious. We get it maybe once or twice per semester. Other than then that we get normal everyday food. And that is not burgers and nuggets and stuff like that, that doesn't really happen. I've had a burger in school once the last two years. Oh, and it's always free.

And once again, forgive me for being European, but the American schoolfood seems retarded.
 
Nice, now that you mention it I do remember having a salad bar in high school. But a pasta bar, sandwich bar, soup etc - that's really awesome. That's what the food should be like. I remember watching a Jamie Oliver experiment once where he went into the school with a revamp in mind, where he took away french fries. It was all the kids were eating - fries. So he introduced something healthier - he made 3 lines - one for the typical lunch w/ fries, the salad bar line, and his line for new food. The teens were just hitting the french fry line. His line got nothing. So he took the fries away. Dumped 'em all. Forced the kids to eat healthier. And over the course of a week, his line was out the door and down the hall way. It was cool to watch, interesting cause it seems the kids were programmed to eat the fries. But really, it was all they had.

Watch Jamie's video on how they make chicken nuggets here too. Makes ya gag. My kids aren't allowed to eat the nuggets or patties.

Does your school have a nice big budget for that? The biggest problem in healthy lunches is that its $$. But it should be most important because kids/teens will thrive better in school with a good nutritional balance. Grease and crap just makes them groggy and blahhh.
 
Have you ever had french fries for school lunch?

I can honestly say that we never, ever had fries, nor hamburgers.

Fish sticks, though, lemme tell ya. A shitload of fish sticks.
 
one of the things i miss most about private school was the food. it's leagues better than the food at public school, and food was included in the tuition so you could go back for seconds, thirds, etc. as much as you wanted. in my public school, it's $2.60 for a lunch and that's that.
 
Never had french fries in school. Never. Had chicken nuggets one time in 8th grade, it was crazy.

Lots of fish sticks, yes.
 
Okay so I think what's going on in this one is 12-year-old Honorat Rose Hermione Witza from Haiti eating what I thought, porridge and a cracker. Her school is poor as can be imagined, and only seldom offers food to students.

 
My school doesn't have a cafeteria...We either pack our lunch, use the vending machines, or when you're an upperclassman you go out and walk to Wawa to get lunch. I wish my school would serve a lunch. I never wake up early enough to bring something from home, and machines/wawa gets expensive.
 
wawa?

but it was much easier and cheaper to make my own lunch or just grab a small bite at the market

now hanging out at lunch was a lot of fun. so many epic food fights. great conversation as well

so i mean if it was me with a sack lunch and my buddies with there school food... meh it did not matter
 
If we ever bump into each other, please direct me to the nearest food fight. Gotta experience that at least once, I guess.
 
the first thing i noticed in these was the dishes. at my highschool we use styrofoam plates and plastic silverware. also they dont even give us plastic butterknives in fear that they could be used as a weapon.
 
this. but my school is downtown so i have pretty much any type of food I want at my disposal. i can pick between 3 different subways.
 
All my highschool and university food was provided by a sub-par food service company called Aramark. The Highschool experience (10 years ago) tended to be terribly salty, low quality fast food, healthy choices were prepared in such a way that made them inedible, and you spent $5-10 per meal. Lots of greasy pizza too.

University first year was a mandatory food plan for residence students. Food was slightly better in terms of variety, but still very salty, lots of filler corn/potatoes, poor vegetarian options and an ok salad bar.

I never ate much in high school at the cafe because my mom prepared awesome home cooked meals; but for first year university I had to eat every meal at their cafe. I can safely say that the one year spent eating that food threw my body off for a solid 3-4 years after.

Im glad to see more emphasis on food and what fuel we but in our body. Good thread topic.

 
one lasted a good 4 min.. which is pretty long.. like we flipped over tabels and used them as bunkers.and then some kid took some colonge and let it on fire and threw it and then the party was over.. it pretty much ended with the princapal sitting in the middle of the cafetera watching.but we had a about 5 during my whole highschool.. one was bad.. people moved tables near the door ways and then they starting throwing food and people paniced and ran into the tables someone almost got crushed

and please excuse my spelling i am lazy right now
 
Would you have been happy to get healthy food options for cheap, or for free? I know that a lot of kids still skip school lunch from junior high onwards to go do some other shit instead of "waste time" eating.
 
To be honest the USA lunch looks almost pretty good. Of course there could be more veggies on the plate, the bun should be whole grain (and probably sliced bread) and the chicken should not be fried. I am happy to see at least it is not a side of fries, which is what most people had when I was in school.

I think the biggest concern I have though is the packaging. Notice how every other lunch is served on reusable dishes. Every part of that american lunch is single-use plastic with the exception of the milk (which still has to be recycled). Hell they even wrapped the orange in its own styrofoam cup! There is no reason they have to create all this waste, everything here including the milk could be served on reusable trays and in reusable cups.
 
I guess the english one was wrapped in saran wrap. That was packed from home though. At least it wasn't in a brown paper bag.
 
This needs to be reiterated. Excellent point. Excessive packaging drives me nuts and actually influences what i buy.
 
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