Saijamari, who works at the school, never eats the food served there.
Saijamari Mäkinen is a routine that repeats itself every weekday morning. He prepares himself a tasty dinner salad for work from what he happens to find at home. Preferably organic. Vegetables and meat, fish, chicken, cheese or egg as a source of protein and high-quality olive oil as a sauce.
A meal that nourishes and keeps you hungry for a long time. In addition to the salad, he takes a healthy snack from home to work.
The preparations take no more than ten minutes, but Mäkinen thinks that everything is worth the effort. He works as a school counselor, and could eat school food at his workplace. Yet he has never done so in his three-year career. Why?
– I have always been interested in nutrition and I have intestinal challenges. I want to eat only clean, healthy and truly nutritious food, says Mäkinen.
In his opinion, school food is not like this.
– I have followed this through my work and my children, and I have heard from them how the quality of the food has decreased all the time. In my work, I have seen how, for example, soups and Kiisselit are made from powder bags to which water is added. It is far from a real, nutritious soup.
An example of Saijamari Mäkinen’s lunch salad. Saijamari Mäkinen
In addition to the quality, the taste also suffers
Mäkinen considers it problematic that large scale kitchens use a lot of semi-finished, processed and ultra-processed raw materials with a lot of additives. This not only affects the quality of the food, but also the taste.
– When food doesn’t taste good, you don’t want to eat it. Then the food has to be thrown away, Mäkinen laments.
As one example of the importance of taste, Mäkinen highlights the spread offered at his school. Many students prefer to eat their crackers bare rather than with a spread. According to Mäkinen, good quality and taste often go hand in hand.
Mäkinen also points out that processed raw materials and additives such as carrageenan can cause stomach problems. The same concern has also been raised elsewhere. The topic has been discussed in Kokkola, for example, where the city ended up regretting the poor quality of school food.
Money is saved
Teachers and other school staff have to pay more than six euros per meal for school food. Mäkinen says that he saves money by eating his own snacks. And he is not the only staff member at his workplace who resorts to them.
Mäkinen’s duties include supervising the students’ meals, so he eats his lunch in the company of the students. They have reacted to the director’s snacks with eager curiosity.
– Many times they come to say that it looks good.
Many fruitful discussions have also flowed from Eve. Mäkinen has been able to tell the students about different foods and diets and the importance of healthy food. There has been a lot of interest.
Makes others wonder too
The quality of school food worries not only Mäkinen but also many others. For example, in 2024, two youth councilors of Espoo did in the city initiative for the quality of school food for improvement. According to them, tastier school food would increase students’ enthusiasm to eat it.
Mäkinen agrees.
– If the food were of better quality, the number of students going would decrease [kaupan] buying a snack at the frying stations because they didn’t want to eat school food. High-quality and nutrient-dense food would taste better to students, Mäkinen thinks.
– Unnecessary feasting would also decrease when the stomach gets real food to fill it.
In his opinion, better and better quality food would also support school children’s coping and health better.
According to Mäkinen, the primary way to improve quality is related to raw materials. He hopes that processed products containing a lot of additives would be replaced with clean, domestic basic products.
– I would hope that schools would offer ordinary home-cooked food made from genuine, clean ingredients.
Mäkinen knows that this is still done in a few schools. And the students also like to eat food in them. These schools do not rely on the food of large central kitchens.
A citizens’ initiative is underway to improve the quality of school food. Stock photo of school food at Vallila elementary school in Helsinki. Tuuli Syrjälä
Citizen initiative in the making
At the end of the year, Mäkinen made a publication on social media where he shared his thoughts on school food. There has been a lot of feedback.
In the comments, other people who work in schools say that they eat their own lunches for the same reasons, and Mäkinen has received many private messages about it. So the subject speaks.
In addition, it was published in the Kansalaisaaloite.fi service at the beginning of November an initiative to secure non-ultra-processed and additive-free food for children. At the time of the interview, it had more than 47,000 signatures. 50,000 is required for processing.
– I hope it gets processed.
Although Mäkinen eats his own lunch, he says that he appreciates the fact that students in Finland are offered a free hot meal at school.
He just wished it was of better quality.
– Such that we, as Finns, could be proud that we offer school food that genuinely supports well-being, says Mäkinen.
In his opinion, a model could be taken from the guidelines of the fresh nutritional recommendations in the United States, which emphasize clean food and advise to avoid additives and ultra-processed products. When it comes to children and young people, investments in them have far-reaching consequences.