No more bagged lunches?

Food, food, food. Oh, I should have done my research around food and our relationship to it.

See this headline, for example: Chicago school bans some lunches brought from home.
What does that make you think of? Do you start to wonder which lunches are banned? Maybe it's a cultural issue? Maybe an ethical one? Or perhaps it's related to health? That's what principal Elsa Carmona says was her motivation, in this quote: "Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school. It's about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke." (Students with allergies or medical reasons are exempted from this ban).

While this may seem shocking at first (a sign that Americans live in a nanny state, where the school thinks it knows better than parents about feeding children) or just bring to mind awful images from popular culture of the blob of something tossed onto a school tray, let's move a bit beyond North American examples and consider what good can come from school lunches...

From my experience in France, the bagged lunch doesn't really exist (somewhere, my mother, for whom making lunches for 4 children was the bane of her existence, is shaking her head and wishing she had raised her children in France). Instead, students get over an hour for lunch so they can either go home, or eat the school lunch, an affordable, hot and healthy meal. At the junior high school where I spent many weekday afternoons, a sample lunch menu would be salad and bread, fish and veggies, a choice of yogurt cup or fruit, and depending on the day, a lunch-sized piece of cheese or cookie for dessert. In the cafeteria, there was not a can of pop in sight. Instead there were pitchers and cups available for students to fill with water and take to their tables. At the school, parents paid on a sliding scale, but most meals were in the range of 2 euro. And this cafeteria culture doesn't end with grade 12, but continues into university with various cafeterias set up near the university for students to eat on the way to or from classes for a reasonable price. The most interesting point? They were only open around meal times, 12-2 and 6-8. Forget going for pizza at all hours of the evening, you eat at a set time, with other students. At the teacher's college where I worked everyone took an hour forty-five minute break at noon to enjoy lunch together.

What to take away from this? There are, of course, many influences outside of school that shape peoples' relationships with food and we know the French have a long history of simple, wholesome food that predates public schooling. In recent years, the fight against genetically modified food products as well as the practice of shopping for fresh vegetables, meat and bread daily and planning a full, sit-down dinner, has only shown the divide between eating patterns in North America and parts of Europe. I discovered the possible benefits of this 'food culture' by accident during a conversation class with the teacher trainees, when I had them make up a daily menu to practice food terms. Not only were their menus identical, but they also met the requirements of the food pyramid and their choices for lunch matched the menus I had seen displayed in the junior high school whe I also worked.

Of course, the students my age in France have this kind of relationship with food because their parents did and because they ate their lunches at school. But in order to affect change, we have to start somewhere, don't we? I don't think it's a coincedence that out of all of the food-goodness ideas (crepes! raclette!) that I picked up in France, the school cafeteria was among them. I can't say for certain how much this one meal a day will impact a school in Chicago, as there are a lot of variables: what is the price of these meals, what kinds of foods are offered to students, and how might this impact other dietary or cultural needs? (School in France have struggled with the issue of providing halal meat to Muslim students). Maybe we will only see changes in these childrens' children, if other changes happen in North American food culture as well. But we have to start somewhere. And why not use an educational institution to start educating children about food?