Thanks to my friend Alyce Ester (of the great online cooking magazine, Culinary Thymes), I learned of this recent CBS Sunday Morning segment on school lunches in France.
You might want to get out some hankies before you watch this. There’s everything you’d expect from France and more: five course meals for three-year olds; locally-sourced, hand-prepared foods; an emphasis on regional cuisine; real china plates and cutlery (ou est le spork?) ; food that teaches kids about French culture (escargot! bouillabaisse!) rather than being dumbed down to our depressing Kid Food level; etc. etc.
The report highlights two French schools, one where the cost of a meal is $5 or $6 per student, about twice what the U.S. federal government pays schools for children on free lunch, and another where the chef works with about half that amount. If at that latter school, overhead is included in the cost of the lunch (the report doesn’t say), then the chef is turning out amazing food for the same money that provides our kids with nuggets and pizza. My guess, though, is that at the school with the lower-priced lunches, all $2.50-$3.00 is going toward food, whereas in American schools, that figure is usually about 95 cents to $1.10, after overhead.
And to think that Congress was unable to come up with a six-cent-per-meal increase, which, if even if we’d gotten it, was going to come out of the mouths of people on food stamps.
It’s enough to make you choke on your Freedom Fries.
Stephanie says
I liked the concept that the parents pay what they can and the city picks up the rest. And 2.50/meal for high schoolers and they were still eating fresh food everyday? What is wrong with our system???
anthony ranieri says
i want to go to school in france now.
the best part was when the chef at the second school said: just because they can’t vote, we can’t throw anything in their faces.
Bri says
It’s shameful, isn’t it, how badly we downplay the importance of feeding our kids well, while other developed nations take PRIDE in the food they serve in schools? Good food = healthy bodies. Healthy bodies = healthy minds. Healthy minds = good learners. Good learners = a promising future of productive citizens. I would sincerely doubt that anyone in the United States would dispute the truthfulness of any of those statements, but somehow we miss the simple mathematical equation that results: Good food = a promising future of productive citizens. Maybe it’s because we ate too many US school lunches as kids, so our math skills aren’t up to par.
Monica says
Le sigh is correct. It frustrates me to think parents are trying to help their children at home with good ingredients and meals, but once they get to school, it’s a different story. It shouldn’t be like that, a healthy lunch shouldn’t be something that needs debating!
Karen says
Oh Mon Dieu !! This video brought back some memories (good and “bad”). As you might have guessed, I am French (I grew up in the South). I now live in Houston and quite worried about school lunch programs. I am often “shocked” by the menus which could be part of cultural differences/references. Yes, school lunches in France are balanced, even though we were served some “weird” vegetables (salsify & chard are my bad memories), which are traditional. The meal is composed of appetizer (salad, crudites), entree, cheese & dessert (usually fruit) and children (starting age 3) eat at the table, with real plates & silverware and water as a drink. The lunch ladies usually help the children (especially the youngest ones – schools start at 3 YO), encourage them to taste the food and teach them good table manners. My husband laughed when the lunch lady told the kid “at the table, we don’t play, we eat”. It’s kind of what I tell my 4YO daughter because eating is a serious matter in our house ^_^.
Aaaaah I hope the US could see how important is for our kids to eat healthy and balanced menus… My daughter goes to a French preschool which doesn’t have a lunch program yet. Everyday I pack her lunch and I’m glad she eats a balanced meal everyday. I really wish this country would throw the junk food away or at least wouldn’t give it to our kids and call it “lunch”.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Karen: What you describe is SO different from the US lunch room, as you know. Just the difference between china and silverware vs. flimsy styrofoam and a plastic spork speaks volumes! I’m so glad you stopped by to share the French perspective. 🙂
Karen says
Thanks! It is different and after watching this video, I know I will prepare lunch boxes for a loooooong time (summer camp included). My nephew (4YO also) is in France and goes to public school. My sister-in-law is quite happy about the lunch program and she usually cooks according to school menus, so her son won’t eat the same meal in the evening; and he is not a picky eater, I admit that helps a lot !
I saw your post regarding the different school meals in other countries… quite impressive !
Christine says
Seems to me that your recent attack on Michael Moore and school lunches in France are in direct opposition to the content in these posts. I wonder what could have changed your mind?
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Christine: I’m so glad you brought this post to my attention! Having now published over 1,300 posts, I can no longer remember all of them, so reading this early post (written just four months after the launch of my blog in May, 2010) was like coming across a forgotten baby picture.
But while you seem to think this post undercuts my 2016 Times op-ed, I was actually surprised to see how consistent it was, especially given that I was such a neophyte in this area. Mr. Moore (and many, many others – see, e.g, https://thelunchtray.com/why-im-fed-up-with-those-photos-of-school-lunches-around-the-world/) are guilty of making facile, sensationalistic comparisons of American school food to that in France, without ever asking WHY France’s school food is so much better. Yet in this early post you can see a nascent school food writer struggling to figure out the economics but still making the all-important point that France is spending considerably more on food costs than we do in the United States. (Mr. Moore says in his voiceover in “Where to Invade Next” that although the French school he visits serves scallops and lamb, the chef “spends less per lunch than we do in our schools in the United States.” That’s terribly misleading to viewers of his film.)
The only way in which I think this post is off the mark is that I fail to discuss the bigger societal picture, i.e, the many factors in French society (beyond funding) that also contribute to better school meals, particularly those which better prime the students to accept this type of food. These factors include state-funded “taste training” in preschools, warnings on junk food advertising, bans on school junk food sales and of course societal value placed on French food culture. I do make those points in the Times piece – evidence of how my own understanding of school food and children’s larger food environments has matured and depeened after six years of mulling over the subject.
At any rate, thanks for your comment here, and thanks again for letting me take this trip down memory lane.