Happy Monday! I thought I’d kick off the week with a few school food stories from around the world:
England
The Southwark district of Central London recently instituted free school lunch for all children, regardless of income level, as a means of reducing stigma in the lunch room. But Southwark has come under fire by some critics, who claim the program is too expensive.
Here on The Lunch Tray we’ve talked a fair amount about the notion of universal, free school meals as a means of improving food and reducing stigma (see, e.g., “What Would School Food Look Like if It Were ‘Free for All?‘”), an idea best articulated by Janet Poppendieck in Free for All: Fixing School Food in America. But whether a great idea or not, I don’t see it happening in this country any time soon.
China
After a rash of food poisoning incidents in schools, China’s State Food and Drug Administration has ordered a nationwide food safety review. In one incident reported earlier this week, over 300 children were sickened after eating lunch at a rural primary school. [Hat tip: Bill Marler]
India
Equally stomach-turning, in India at least 50 school children were recently sickened when a dead lizard was reportedly served to them in their school meal. An investigation is underway.
France
Blogging colleague Karen LeBillon continues to post regularly about school food in France and the menus never cease to amaze. By way of example, today in Brest school kids are eating organic celery salad, couscous with vegetables and vanilla yogurt — a far cry from the nugget-pizza-burger rotation in most American schools.
By the way, I’m excited to be sharing a review of Karen’s new book, French Kids Eat Everything, in the coming days here on TLT.
And Don’t Forget . . .
For the school-lunch-obsessed among us (and you know who you are), no blog is more fun than What’s For School Lunch?, updated regularly with snapshots of school food around the world.
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