There is no kids' food in French school lunches. While the French serve things most of our kids would recognize (lasagna, for example), they also have kids eating everything from beet salad to endive, lentils to lettuce, and even roast guinea fowl and stinky blue cheese. And that’s what the get.
Six million French children eat tasty, healthy, (mostly) scratch-cooked, three or four course meals every day. And they do this for an average of $3 per meal (not much more than the average price of meals in the US National School Lunch Program). Low-income families have subsidized prices (the lowest price in Paris is 20 cents per meal) and every child—no matter what their income—sits down to the same meal with their peers every day. (Vending machines and fast food are banned in all schools, and packed lunches are strongly discouraged: the cantine is where most children eat).
I blog every week about these amazing school lunch menus at my French Kids School Lunch Project. I started this blog while writing my book, French Kids Eat Everything, which is about the French Food Rules parents use to teach their kids to be healthy eaters. We learned these rules in France, but when we moved back to North America I realized that schools and parents need to work together to teach children to eat well—and that this sadly doesn’t always happen here. The book is a very personal story about how our family transformed our eating habits, but I realized I couldn’t stop there: school lunch reform is something vital for all of our children. Hence the French Kids School Lunch Project was born.
Why are these menus so good? Because the French believe that learning doesn’t stop in the lunchroom. In the ‘school restaurant’ (restaurant scolaire--the name says it all, doesn’t it?) they actively teach kids to like and eat a wide variety of food. This is backed up by lessons in the classroom (and, of course, by the French Food Rules that parents teach their kids at home). The French are so dedicated to this that they don’t repeat the same dish more than once every month in any given school. Just think about what your kids’ lunches were like if that rule were in place.
Of course, these comments on the French approach to lunches are a series of generalizations. There are great school lunch programs here at home, and the French system is not perfect (as I explore on my blog, there are debates over issues like serving halal food and prioritizing children from dual-worker families). some kids here eat everything, and there are certainly picky eaters in France. Nonetheless, reading the French school lunch menus is an eye-opener about what kids eat.
Perhaps most astonishing of all: there is no kids' food here. No flavoured milk (the kids drink water). Ketchup only once per week (and only with dishes with which ketchup is traditionally served, like steak). There is little or no fried food (which can only be served a few times per month, according to Ministry of Education regulations). Vegetables are about half of the overall meal (the starter is always a vegetable, and the main dish always has a vegetable side dish). There is also no choice on the menu (for primary school kids), and only one choice for highschool kids, minimizing ‘plate waste’, which is often an important hidden cost in our school lunches.
Now, I'm not necessarily recommending the wholesale adoption of the French approach. The question is: what can we learn from them? I believe that some elements of the French approach (like their well thought-out approach to 'taste training' for kids) could definitely work here. So my hope is that the French Kids School Lunch Project will spark a conversation in North America about what children eat, and how we can do better at educating them to eat a large variety of foods.
Underlying this blog is my belief that healthy food is a right, and that eating well is for --not just for elites or foodies. I also believe that food insecurity and unhealthy eating habits are two expressions of food and education systems that need fixing, so I blog about food politics, and about the amazing people and organizations working for better food in North America. These continue to inspire me...and hopefully you too!
Food for thought, n'est-ce pas? In future posts, I'll explore American school lunches, and discuss some great examples of good lunches here at home. In the meantime, for more information, check out FrenchKidsEatEverything.com.
In closing, here's a lovely quote from the school website in Versailles:'savoir-vivre'
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