If we eat with our eyes, then the view of the new school lunches is not good. Claims of late deliveries, questions about meal quality, equipment glitches, and feedback from kids saying “yuck” have been widely reported. Here, Colleen Brown follows up her story The unpalatable politics of the free school lunch progamme with an interview with chef Allyson Gofton who has firsthand experience of school lunches done well - in France.
Food writer, chef and host of the Food in a Minute TV show that ran for 13 years, Allyson Gofton is well qualified to have a view on school lunches, especially after her own then-young children experienced 21/2 years of dining in at their French primary school.
In 2012, Gofton and her husband relocated from suburban Auckland to a small village in rural France to immerse themselves in French culture.
For their children, Jean-Luc and Olive-Rose, lunching at school was essential to fitting in – being part of a collective is part of the country’s identity. Legislation states public schools must offer lunch and any child not opting for the lunch provided must leave the premises. Students sit down together to eat from tables.
“My kids toughened up, ate lunch at school, unable to speak to anyone, learning to eat what was offered,” says Gofton. “Once we got a hang of the routine, we wholeheartedly adopted the system – and a system it is.”
Each village primary school is partnered with a garderie (daycare) run by local authorities. Children enjoy a 3-4 course meal of protein or legumes with vegetables, followed by cheese and a dessert. Menus are published weekly and must conform to government dietary requirements.
For children to have the best shot at life they need nourishing food, not judgment...
In many areas, local authorities subsidise the cost. “A 90-minute subsidised lunch was new territory for my kids,” says Gofton. “They adored the bread from the local boulangerie, quickly learning it was considered impolite not to eat what you were served.”
She appreciated the French ritual of eating together. “Our approach to food is radically different. Here, there is nothing sacred about meals. We eat to survive, not to thrive.”
For too long, she says, key messaging has been to eat for nutrition, breaking the components of our diet into nutrients, reducing the interest and skill of cooking as people count the protein and carbohydrate content of their food.
Although New Zealand is extremely unlikely to introduce such a system as the French, Gofton would like to see broad acceptance that for children to have the best shot at life they need nourishing food, not judgment, and a lunch should be seen as much more than a nutrient count attached to a dollar.
Her ideal would be a system where children create their own lunch every day to learn about food, rather than it just magically appearing in front of them.
“We are, by putting a band-aid on the bigger issue, not teaching our children important life skills and they will be destined, I feel, for an unhealthy future.”
