Well, these pictures of schools lunches around the world are definitely worth more than a thousand words! The ones you see here make me hungry!
Brie, green beans, carrot, rare steak and pudding of kiwi fruit and apples is served in French schools.
In France (again), school lunch is an art form: hot, multi-course and involving vegetables. A meal of rice, salmon, ratatouille, a slice of bread, a salad with celery and carrots, and an orange and donut at the Anne Franck school in Lambersart, northern France.
A meal of traditional flavours: Brazil’s rice and black beans, baked plantain, pork with peppers and coriander, green salad and a seeded roll.
Rice, a chicken croquette, a piece of taro root and yellow pea soup is the school lunch in Old Havana, Cuba.
In Japan, school children tuck into fried fish, dried seaweed, tomatoes, miso soup with potatoes, rice (in the metal container), and milk.
Wholesome: Seeded roll, shrimp with brown rice, gazpacho and tri-colour peppers. Dessert is half an orange.
A serving of borscht (beetroot soup) with pickled cabbage, sausages and mash. Dessert is a sweet pancake.
Greek school lunches feature baked chicken with orzo, stuffed grape leaves, salad of cucumber and tomatoes, yogurt with pomegranate seeds and two oranges.
Bowls of salad are ready to be served at Delcare Edu Center, a local kindergarten and child care center in the business district of Singapore.
A healthier UK school dinner: Two trays at a primary school in London. The meal at right consists of pasta with broccoli and slices of bread, and fruit. At left are vegetable chili with rice and broccoli, sponge cake with custard, and a banana.
And another UK meal for kids: frankfurters and beans, a baked potato, corn on the cob, slice of melon and a box drink.
South Indian school children eat off a thali plate which has white rice, sambar (dhal), smoked gourd vegetable stir-fry, curd, buttermilk and kesari, a type of sweet dessert made from semolina.
Lunch in an Estonian school is rice with a piece of meat and purple cabbage. They also have bread and a get a cup of chocolate drink .
Balanced diet: Italian children get pasta, fish, two kinds of salad, rocket and caprese, a bread roll and grapes.
In Finland lunch is mainly a vegetarian affair of pea soup, carrots, beetroot salad, crusty roll and sweet pancake with berries to finish.
School lunch in Alba, Spain (left): white flesh peaches, strawberries and yogurt melts, cous-cous, broccoli, cucumbers and roasted salmon; (right): Poached apple pears, strawberries and blue berries, boiled swede and fresh garden peas.
South Korean children tuck into broccoli and peppers, fried rice with tofu, fermented cabbage and fish soup.
And then, there are U.S. school lunches…
School lunches in the United States stand in stark contrast to the wholesome, and in some cases even decadent, meals served to kids in other markedly less fortunate nations.
By the way, did you know that most U. S. schools NO LONGER ACTUALLY PREPARE THEIR OWN MEALS? Yes, they have been outsourced to, primarily, fast food places, and THIS is what your school taxes are paying for. Happy? Hope not.
This is only “balanced” in the minds of embarrassed parents and school lunch servers, bureaucrats and the lobbyists who have paid them off. Actually, most schools I am acquainted with would just have pizza and soda, although there is a growing backlash, just not large enough.
This is the kind of junk they have been eating all year and we wonder why our kids misbehave, can’t concentrate, are growing fatter every day and don’t know what healthy eating looks like except on government flyers. Will you sit by and let it be the same come Fall? Your kids will likely eat better when NOT in school.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but I would like to add at least one: Pathetic.
Feel free to add your own adjectives.
Images and descriptions from:
Lloyd's of Rochester - an Eclectic blog 