As a slight counterpoint to this, I was born and raised in small villages in Normandy. I had good food in elementary school and high school. A bit on the oily s

As a slight counterpoint to this, I was born and raised in small villages in Normandy. I had good food in elementary school and high school. A bit on the oily side but still freshly prepared, relatively healthy and actually better and less oily than food I later had as an exchange student in the US. In middle school though, I had truly awful food. More than once the yogurts we were served were past the expiry date and we had a few cases of food poisoning. As a kid, I disliked the food so much that I usually just skipped lunch (I would go to the cafeteria because I had to and would just eat the bread and maybe the yogurts if they weren't expired), not good for growth... The problem of preparing fresh food for students is that it relies on having a Chef who is good at his job and organized enough to manage the food stocks and expiry dates. Also as an additional nitpicking, according to the article: > Contrast all this with France, where vending machines are banned on campus This is recent (2005 apparently) and that certainly was not the case when I was a kid, we had vending machines both in middle school and high school. Additionally to this, in high school, we had a bakery selling fresh warm pain au chocolat at 10am (not healthy but certainly delicious)