M.Unprocessed local and seasonal raw materials, fewer foods of animal origin and more legumes. These are some of the simple changes that could make a difference in the nutrition of the children who eat lunch at school canteens every day. More than two million students, mostly girls and boys enrolled in kindergarten and primary schools and to a small extent girls and boys who attend lower secondary schools.
Changing canteens to change the overall food system
Given the numbers, “policies regarding school canteens can positively impact the overall food system»Declared the president of Slow Food Italy, Barbara Nappini. This is the thesis put forward by Slow Food at the conference Think what a canteen (organized in the space Feeding the city at Terra Madre Salone del Gusto 2022, in Turin until 26 September).
Overall, “we are talking about 380 million meals a year, provided in schools by the companies that win the tenders called by local administrations”, explains Claudia Paltrinieri, president of Foodinsider that publishes every year the rating on school canteens.
More and more sustainable menus
Rating from which it emerges that many steps have already been taken by school canteens: there is more variety, organic, short supply chain and attention to quality raw materials; fewer processed foods and plastic single portions. And a return to washable cutlery after the most critical phase of the pandemic, during which they had adopted disposable plastic. Changes favored by the application of the minimum environmental criteria (Cam) in municipal calls for the canteen service. But if there are schools that make precise choices for sustainability (for example, offering local products in bulk such as yogurt ‘on tap’), the gap between the more and less virtuous is also growing. And waste is on the rise: 47% of children eat less than half of the meal.
The canteens as a tool to combat poverty
Meals eaten at the same table by children of very different social backgrounds. Which, without the meal consumed in the canteens, would suffer from real shortcomings.
“When, in the first months of 2020, the schools closed due to the lockdown, within a few weeks many families we follow began to have problems putting together two meals a day”, explained Fosca Nomis, head of advocacy and policy from Save the Children Italy. It is the demonstration of how much the school canteen is an important service for many families, a real tool to combat poverty“.
The canteens and climate change
But securing a meal is not enough. To make a difference, to combat the climate crisis through food, we need a radical change in what we consume. An example, in this sense, comes from the Florentine plain, where the Quality and Services company supplies the canteens of six municipalities, for a total of 8,000 meals a day in 70 schools.
It does enhancing local and seasonal raw materials, reducing the proposal of foods of animal origin and offering girls and boys dishes based on legumes. “We process four tons a day of raw materials, of which 70% comes from less than 80 km,” he explained Filippo Fossati, representative of the company studied by Slow Food.
Less meat in the canteens
A separate chapter should be devoted to the consumption of animal proteins. «The quantity of meat in the canteens of the Bologna, Milan, Naples, Rome and Turin today is close to quota 1 million and 500 thousand kilograms every year», Explains Paola Segurini, of the Anti-vivisection League (Lav) Onlus. «As Lav we have proposed to the municipal administrations of reduce it by 20% over the next four years and to establish a day in which the school canteen menu is totally based on vegetable products ».
The responsibility of local administrations
In fact, it is up to the local administrations to choose how to manage the school canteen service. If directly with its own staff or contract it out by means of tenders.
«The question we must ask ourselves – Fossati’s concluding words – is: do we prefer to continue to consider school catering as a hotel service. That is, in the way it is understood almost everywhere today. Or we want to start thinking of it as a great political fact that generates change? “
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