8 ms·

I spent years living in France, and my daughter went to kindergarten and grade one there. The lunches were insane. A 3 year-old can expect a five course meal

by adekok 11y ago

I spent years living in France, and my daughter went to kindergarten and grade one there. The lunches were insane. A 3 year-old can expect a five course meal every day. Prepared fresh on-site. Different every day of the month. The school district would mail a calendar of lunches to the parents every month. I still have some. The parents care about the food their children eat. They're willing to pay a little more for good food at school. As a computer programmer, I earned an above average salary, and paid small amounts every semester for better food. IIRC, it was about $200. And definitely way below $1K. My daughter loved her lunches, and I was happy to not have to make something with the French parents would then laugh at. ;) The French attitude is "we live to eat". They say every other country "eats to live". That definitely shows in the different attitude towards the school lunches.

gkanai 11y ago
> The French attitude is "we live to eat". They say every other country "eats to live". Japan also lives to eat and their public school lunches are very healthy and nutritious. The children often also partake in the preparation of the meals in part, so they get that learning as well.
- hanniabu 11y ago
  That actually seems like a great idea. Not enough kids know how to cook and I feel this is a reason a lot of the younger generation eats out rather than at home. Having a class rotation where every day of the month (or week, depending how big the school is) a different before-lunch class will instead go to the cafeteria and prep meals would be awesome. Students would get to learn and the school may be able to cut costs by hiring less lunch attendants. Of course kids would have to wash their hands and be trusted not to taint the food, but that goes for current lunch attendants as well.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    Colleges have a hit or miss on this. A lot of liberal arts colleges still seem to have student employment opportunities in the dinning hall. In my large public university? Sodexo and poorly paid off site employees for 100% of staff. Another failure of unmodelled externalities in capitalism, I think. If a kid's lunch costs $5 to involve them in the preparation process on site vs. $2.50 for a minimum cost contractor preparation... which is the better deal?
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    I have literally seen elementary school children in Japan slicing vegetables with a normal kitchen knife. All the kids learn knife skills. It's amazing, but I suspect not something that would be easy to export, culturally. When I taught English to high school students in Japan, I had a couple of courses where we took over the kitchens and the students had to figure out how to cook meals with English recipes. I was very impressed with most of them. Certainly every student had basic cooking skills and could be trusted with every aspect of kitchen safety (and I was in a low level school). One of the downsides to the Japanese school lunch approach is that it puts a burden on teachers. They are "on duty" during lunch time on a rotating basis. Japanese teachers get very little down time and extras like this are just expected of them. Lunch is taken very seriously at the schools. In high school, lunch is not provided. A local bakery comes by to offer a variety of baked goods at a reasonable price, but you can't really trust that there will be decent food left by the time you get there (it is always a mad rush to be first in line at lunch time). Parents are expected to make a packed lunch. The teachers will often look at the students' lunches and if they are not good enough, the parents will be called in. In extreme cases I have seen teachers teaching parents how to cook nutritious packed lunches. Again, it's a good policy which I think would be impossible to export. Imagine being called up by your kid's teacher and having to go in and be lectured because you failed to make a good enough lunch. I've actually seen parents in tears during their reprimand. Also imagine teachers staying late (unpaid) so that they can teach parents how to make lunch... In many ways, Japan is an amazing place...
    - douche 11y ago
      U.S. school teachers are routinely on duty during lunch periods, as crowd control, so I'm not sure that's really a difference. U.S. school lunches are absolutely woeful. Just check out the #thanksmichelleobama pictures on twitter for a general overview[1]. I think there's got to be some big kick-backs given by the packaged food distributors, because there is no way that frozen pizza and McRib sandwiches are cheaper than cooking actual food. [1] https://twitter.com/hashtag/thanksmichelleobama https://twitter.com/hashtag/thanksmichelleobama
      - knughit 11y ago
- dnautics 11y ago
  Having experinced this (and also student participation in cleaning the school)... You can't do that in America because jobs would be lost. Then there would be complaints about insourcing, or child exploitation.
- gbog 11y ago
  I think Chinese are even worse: they not only "live to eat", but also talk, think, write almost only about food. Especially true in Sichuan: there food is the only conversation topic available. In Beijing it is possible to talk also about other things, like politics.
- simonebrunozzi 11y ago
  And Italy, and most of the mediterranean countries. And possibly, also some other countries in Asia or South America.
walterstucco 11y ago
> The French attitude is "we live to eat" I guess you've never been to Italy ;)
- Profan 11y ago
  I believe the Italian version would be "we live to eat like pigs", ;D
  - walterstucco 11y ago
    yeah, kinda :D I should warn you, don't ever accept an invitation to a family dinner from me, if you're not ready ;)
    - Profan 11y ago
      Oh I've already made that mistake once (spent a week over new years with an Italian friend's family in southern Italy) Can't say I have anything to regret.. the few extra kg's are just a tribute :D
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
alain94040 11y ago
Looking at random "menu cantine" on Google, getting hungry already. For instance: http://dumezil-lyc.spip.ac-rouen.fr/IMG/pdf/menu_du_14_au_18_decembre_2015.pdf.pdf http://dumezil-lyc.spip.ac-rouen.fr/IMG/pdf/menu_du_14_au_18... On Tuesday, chicken curry (with white wine sauce). Wednesday, salmon with potato gratin. And lots of vegetables. I can tell you some US cafeterias are not quite up to speed yet.
mynameishere 11y ago
"Eat to live, don't live to eat," is a Poor Richard quote recommending frugality over gluttony. I guess any proverb can be turned around as required.
drdeca 11y ago
"Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die – but this is sensuality’s cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live." -Kierkegaard
crdb 11y ago
I would caution against extrapolating from your experience. You must have been living in a good district with a decent school (and if you've been in France for any period of time you'll know that fighting for the right school is almost the most important thing in parents' lives and can even decide elections). Crucially, as there are much fewer private schools in France than say the UK or the US, the elite will instead make public superschools and then use connections and districts to put their kids in them (and get the taxpayer to foot the bill), the most famous being Henri IV and Louis le Grand in Paris, but this system applies to all regions (AFAIK). Anecdotal evidence: my "college" or middle school equivalent (which I won't name and shame) in Grenoble had a much less interesting canteen. For example, the fries (served with every meal) were undercooked, sometimes still frozen inside, and we occasionally found worms. The queue for food could be as long as 45 minutes, forcing everybody to gulp down their food as fast as they could so as not to be late to the next class. The food was always deep fried meat or equivalents. A decent part of the student population was quite fat, although not to US or UK levels of obesity. France is like the US. You have areas like Manhattan or Santa Monica, and you have areas like North Virginia or Ohio, all with their own history, local funding, civil servants providing wildly differing levels of service. Paris is almost another country (and its residents definitely see "provinciaux" as foreigners), maybe even more so than with London and the UK. For a deep dive down the other end, I recommend the movie "Journee de la Jupe" which gives you a taste of the ZEP schools (arguably the worst in France), it's a bit more realistic than "Banlieue 13".
- adekok 11y ago
  > my "college" or middle school equivalent (which I won't name and shame) in Grenoble Uh... OK. My experience was at Ecole Rue Millet, next to Place Vaucanson :)
faster 11y ago
Sometimes you don't even have to pay more. When we lived in France, we paid less than 3.50€ per day for my daughter's 5-course lunch. A few years earlier in a much smaller town, we had a teacher tell us that if we couldn't pack a 'real' lunch (not PBJs, even though my daughter loved them then), she would bring an appropriate lunch for my daughter herself. At a school we visited in Paris, they publish the lunch menu along with recommendations for a dinner menu at home, to be sure their food didn't clash I guess. Now, back in the US, she complains that all they have at school is cardboard pizza, and that isn't a meal. Clearly she learned to appreciate eating a complete meal.

by adekok 11y ago

gkanai 11y ago

> The French attitude is "we live to eat". They say every other country "eats to live". Japan also lives to eat and their public school lunches are very healthy and nutritious. The children often also partake in the preparation of the meals in part, so they get that learning as well.

hanniabu 11y ago
That actually seems like a great idea. Not enough kids know how to cook and I feel this is a reason a lot of the younger generation eats out rather than at home. Having a class rotation where every day of the month (or week, depending how big the school is) a different before-lunch class will instead go to the cafeteria and prep meals would be awesome. Students would get to learn and the school may be able to cut costs by hiring less lunch attendants. Of course kids would have to wash their hands and be trusted not to taint the food, but that goes for current lunch attendants as well.
- ethbro 11y ago
  Colleges have a hit or miss on this. A lot of liberal arts colleges still seem to have student employment opportunities in the dinning hall. In my large public university? Sodexo and poorly paid off site employees for 100% of staff. Another failure of unmodelled externalities in capitalism, I think. If a kid's lunch costs $5 to involve them in the preparation process on site vs. $2.50 for a minimum cost contractor preparation... which is the better deal?
- mikekchar 11y ago
  I have literally seen elementary school children in Japan slicing vegetables with a normal kitchen knife. All the kids learn knife skills. It's amazing, but I suspect not something that would be easy to export, culturally. When I taught English to high school students in Japan, I had a couple of courses where we took over the kitchens and the students had to figure out how to cook meals with English recipes. I was very impressed with most of them. Certainly every student had basic cooking skills and could be trusted with every aspect of kitchen safety (and I was in a low level school). One of the downsides to the Japanese school lunch approach is that it puts a burden on teachers. They are "on duty" during lunch time on a rotating basis. Japanese teachers get very little down time and extras like this are just expected of them. Lunch is taken very seriously at the schools. In high school, lunch is not provided. A local bakery comes by to offer a variety of baked goods at a reasonable price, but you can't really trust that there will be decent food left by the time you get there (it is always a mad rush to be first in line at lunch time). Parents are expected to make a packed lunch. The teachers will often look at the students' lunches and if they are not good enough, the parents will be called in. In extreme cases I have seen teachers teaching parents how to cook nutritious packed lunches. Again, it's a good policy which I think would be impossible to export. Imagine being called up by your kid's teacher and having to go in and be lectured because you failed to make a good enough lunch. I've actually seen parents in tears during their reprimand. Also imagine teachers staying late (unpaid) so that they can teach parents how to make lunch... In many ways, Japan is an amazing place...
  - douche 11y ago
    U.S. school teachers are routinely on duty during lunch periods, as crowd control, so I'm not sure that's really a difference. U.S. school lunches are absolutely woeful. Just check out the #thanksmichelleobama pictures on twitter for a general overview[1]. I think there's got to be some big kick-backs given by the packaged food distributors, because there is no way that frozen pizza and McRib sandwiches are cheaper than cooking actual food. [1] https://twitter.com/hashtag/thanksmichelleobama https://twitter.com/hashtag/thanksmichelleobama
    - knughit 11y ago
dnautics 11y ago
Having experinced this (and also student participation in cleaning the school)... You can't do that in America because jobs would be lost. Then there would be complaints about insourcing, or child exploitation.
gbog 11y ago
I think Chinese are even worse: they not only "live to eat", but also talk, think, write almost only about food. Especially true in Sichuan: there food is the only conversation topic available. In Beijing it is possible to talk also about other things, like politics.
simonebrunozzi 11y ago
And Italy, and most of the mediterranean countries. And possibly, also some other countries in Asia or South America.

walterstucco 11y ago

> The French attitude is "we live to eat" I guess you've never been to Italy ;)

Profan 11y ago
I believe the Italian version would be "we live to eat like pigs", ;D
- walterstucco 11y ago
  yeah, kinda :D I should warn you, don't ever accept an invitation to a family dinner from me, if you're not ready ;)
  - Profan 11y ago
    Oh I've already made that mistake once (spent a week over new years with an Italian friend's family in southern Italy) Can't say I have anything to regret.. the few extra kg's are just a tribute :D

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

alain94040 11y ago

Looking at random "menu cantine" on Google, getting hungry already. For instance: http://dumezil-lyc.spip.ac-rouen.fr/IMG/pdf/menu_du_14_au_18_decembre_2015.pdf.pdf http://dumezil-lyc.spip.ac-rouen.fr/IMG/pdf/menu_du_14_au_18... On Tuesday, chicken curry (with white wine sauce). Wednesday, salmon with potato gratin. And lots of vegetables. I can tell you some US cafeterias are not quite up to speed yet.

mynameishere 11y ago

"Eat to live, don't live to eat," is a Poor Richard quote recommending frugality over gluttony. I guess any proverb can be turned around as required.

drdeca 11y ago

"Death induces the sensual person to say: Let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we shall die – but this is sensuality’s cowardly lust for life, that contemptible order of things where one lives in order to eat and drink instead of eating and drinking in order to live." -Kierkegaard

crdb 11y ago

I would caution against extrapolating from your experience. You must have been living in a good district with a decent school (and if you've been in France for any period of time you'll know that fighting for the right school is almost the most important thing in parents' lives and can even decide elections). Crucially, as there are much fewer private schools in France than say the UK or the US, the elite will instead make public superschools and then use connections and districts to put their kids in them (and get the taxpayer to foot the bill), the most famous being Henri IV and Louis le Grand in Paris, but this system applies to all regions (AFAIK). Anecdotal evidence: my "college" or middle school equivalent (which I won't name and shame) in Grenoble had a much less interesting canteen. For example, the fries (served with every meal) were undercooked, sometimes still frozen inside, and we occasionally found worms. The queue for food could be as long as 45 minutes, forcing everybody to gulp down their food as fast as they could so as not to be late to the next class. The food was always deep fried meat or equivalents. A decent part of the student population was quite fat, although not to US or UK levels of obesity. France is like the US. You have areas like Manhattan or Santa Monica, and you have areas like North Virginia or Ohio, all with their own history, local funding, civil servants providing wildly differing levels of service. Paris is almost another country (and its residents definitely see "provinciaux" as foreigners), maybe even more so than with London and the UK. For a deep dive down the other end, I recommend the movie "Journee de la Jupe" which gives you a taste of the ZEP schools (arguably the worst in France), it's a bit more realistic than "Banlieue 13".

adekok 11y ago
> my "college" or middle school equivalent (which I won't name and shame) in Grenoble Uh... OK. My experience was at Ecole Rue Millet, next to Place Vaucanson :)

faster 11y ago

Sometimes you don't even have to pay more. When we lived in France, we paid less than 3.50€ per day for my daughter's 5-course lunch. A few years earlier in a much smaller town, we had a teacher tell us that if we couldn't pack a 'real' lunch (not PBJs, even though my daughter loved them then), she would bring an appropriate lunch for my daughter herself. At a school we visited in Paris, they publish the lunch menu along with recommendations for a dinner menu at home, to be sure their food didn't clash I guess. Now, back in the US, she complains that all they have at school is cardboard pizza, and that isn't a meal. Clearly she learned to appreciate eating a complete meal.