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Déjeuner Envy
Whether your kid brings her lunch from home or buys it in the cafeteria, school lunches, although they’ve made great strides in some areas, are still a nutritional battleground.
But not everywhere. Granted, the school year has gotten off to a rocky start in Great Britain, but as vegetarian chef Deborah Madison reports on Culinate about a trip to the Loire Valley, in France, the school lunches are a bit different:
At one school, students were served a choice of salads—mâche with smoked duck and fava beans, or mâche with smoked salmon and asparagus—followed by guinea fowl with roasted potatoes and carrots and steamed broccoli. For dessert, there was a choice of ripe, red-throughout strawberries or clafoutis. A pungent washed-rind cheese was offered, along with French bread and water.
What the hell?! I want to be reincarnated as a French schoolchild. Not only do the meals there sound amazing, but they’re served on heated plates, with real glasses and silverware. Not sporks. And, with two hours allotted for lunch and active play, the children have plenty of time to dine leisurely. The only thing missing from these perfect-sounding school lunches: a glass of wine for digestion.
Posted by | Friday, September 7, 2007 at 9:04am | 7 comments
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"...smoked duck ... guinea fowl ... clafoutis. A pungent washed-rind cheese"
Miriam, what are you talking about? These are supposed to be healthy lunches we are serving and these food are full of Cholesterol and Saturated Fat which will kill us.
Remember, just because the French get a lot of Saturated Fat in their diet (esp. in the South) and they have long lives (esp. in the South) we will probably be inducing instant Heart Attacks in our children if we feed them all this Sat. Fat and Cholesterol.
Ian Lewis
Yes, but the kids are growing, the portions are WAY smaller than the states, and there are vegetables/greens to counterract the fat (duck is not that bad anyway). Don't forget, if you grow up eating like this and monitor portion size, it's not a problem. Kids walking or biking to school makes a huge difference as well.
Also - the article says that lunchtime is 2 hours, most of which is used for exercise. I also think the idea of sitting to a relaxed lunch, with really delicious food in appropriate portions helps children learn to appreciate what their eating and enjoy the experience of food, instead of wolfing down garbage.
Also, two-hour lunches mean the kids are in school for a longer day, which is much better suited to working parents (well, except those Wednesday afternoons which they have off as I recall).
Having attending school in France, and being a "demi-pensionnaire" I ate my share of less than idyllic school cafeteria lunches there as in the USA.
But I do remember being served sparkling wine on special occasions -obciously that wouldn't be happening in an American High School Cafeteria!
My son goes to a public elementary school in Spain and the lunch program is great. It's three courses (served individually on real china, not on a tray) and pretty much what any adult could get as a menú del día. Most teachers stay to eat what the kids are having even though they live closeby and have two hours for lunch. First course is a soup, beans or salad (lentils, white beans, caldo gallego, cocido madrileño, garbanzos, ensalada rusa, etc.) The second course is meat, fish, rice or pasta (paella, roast chicken, squid, hake, salmon, etc.). All of the kids eat the same thing, unless they have a serious food allergy or religious exemption (I'm not sure how/whether the school accomodates this or the parents do).
They also have the option of coming home for lunch for two hours and then going back in the afternoon, which quite a few kids do.
Oh and kids here use glasses and regular tableware and sit in regular seats to eat from about age two and a half... No one thinks twice about it and it's just not a problem at all. One of the biggest sticking points for my son when we go back to the US to visit is the fact that people automatically give him different stuff because he's a kid. The ubiquitous oversized styrofoam or plastic cups with lids are particularly baffling to him, since he knows how wasteful that is. He just doesn't get why anyone would do that when he hasn't spilled a drink in years (he always makes a point to point out that I'm the spiller in the family).