French fries, pizza Fridays, and mystery meat… these are foods that we often see in U.S. school lunches.
However, we don’t see them in Japan’s school lunches. Japan prides itself on its school lunch program where students enjoy healthful meals that are made from scratch and served by students.
“Japan’s standpoint is that school lunches are a part of education,” a government director of school health education Masahiro Oji, told the Washington Post in 2013, “not a break from it.”
In Japan, lunch time is an opportunity to instill healthy eating habits in students as they enjoy balanced meals and learn about the food they eat.
Most Japanese school lunches look like something served out of a fancy restaurant with the main dish of fish, chicken or tofu, rice, soup, salad or a vegetable, a milk, and maybe a piece of fruit or a yogurt that is freshly prepared from scratch and often uses local ingredients.
Sometimes the school will switch it up with Korean or Italian food, according to the Washington Post, but it’s still a far cry from what you see in American school cafeterias where frozen, prepackaged, and fried foods are the norm.
Meals, which are mostly eaten in classrooms and served or sometimes prepared by students to promote self-sufficiency and communal service, are meant to be balanced to keep children full and provide maximum nutrition.
In some schools, kids learn about the food that is on their plate, what vitamins it has, and the effect it has on their bodies so that children understand healthy eating habits.
Parents are billed monthly between $2.50 and $3 per meal, while municipalities pay for the associated labor costs. There are reduced and free options for low-income families.
However, if children do not finish their meals, that’s all they are allowed. There are no school vending machines and, in most districts, kids can’t bring food to school until they are in high school.
Children learn to obediently accept what they are given to eat and if they aren’t satisfied it means a trip to the school nutritionist who deals with children deemed as picky or unhealthy eaters.
The strict regulations surrounding Japanese school lunches have led to the country having one of the highest life expectancy rates in the world and an obesity rate that is well below the global average.
Japan, however, is also a country that struggles with childhood and adolescent eating disorders with government data showing a rise in the number of extremely skinny children, the Washington Post reports.
Japan’s poorer children also don’t suffer from malnutrition, while reports from the U.S. have told of some school that shames their low-income students who can’t pay for lunch.
Many over the years have said that other countries, especially the U.S. should follow in the footsteps of Japan when it comes to school lunch. You be the judge!
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
