My wife and I seem to have always had the same reaction when our children told us about their school meals. “Oh, we really enjoyed our school meals when we were growing up”. They would look at us rather disgustedly and then talk about the food that they were presented with. I remember a lot of milk past its “use by” date but some of it seemed to go bad even before. I cannot really say that I know the reason just the result.
A healthy lifestyle starts at the beginning
Japan has Universal Health Care, as do almost all developed nations in the world. Thus, the government has a direct financial interest in having everyone as healthy as possible. This includes not being obese and eating well. The US, with its for-profit healthcare, would be okay with us being healthy but doesn’t really care much one way or another. The pharmaceuticals would likely prefer us unhealthy as it gives them much more ability to create drugs to reduce symptoms (but not cure), and obtain massive profits, that the food and medical industries have helped to create.
Besides Universal Health Care, which gives the government more motivation for healthy citizens and deprives private insurers from making money on illness, what does Japan do to help their citizens? One major thing is that, in school, they teach their children their adult responsibilities. Children help clean the schools. They help to prepare the meals. They exercise as a regular part of life walking to and from school and around the buildings. Some may be part of sports teams but, unlike in the US, all of the school children exercise in various ways.
Most of the US has abandoned the notion of school cooked foods from real ingredients. Not so in Japan. There are no food pyramids or food balancing charts. There is tradition and regular-sized portions of freshly prepared food.
What social influences in the US fight against healthy eating?
We have an “interesting” situation developing in the US. The prices of food at most of the “fast food” restaurants are approaching the cost of full-service regular restaurants. They are still fast because their food is either pre-prepared or prepared for immediate cooking and serving.
This applies to food eaten at home and during travel and work. What about the schoolchildren? In the US, we have two obstacles. These are the refusal, or social unpopularity, of eating a balanced meal AND the strong desires for communities to pay less for education and children.
McDonald’s, at the urging of some vocal parents, has attempted to have healthier food on their menu several times. We still have apple slices as options but most of the attempts have failed. Because who thinks of going to McDonald’s for a healthy meal?
How, and where, does it go wrong for US schoolchildren?
First, I should say that Japanese schoolchildren and adults do face marketing barrages to eat fast food and processed foods. They are not isolated from the rest of the world. But they see them as treats, special occasion foods that add a bit of variety to their nutritious, but not necessarily always exciting, regular meals.
As is true everywhere, US parents have only a limited amount of time and energy. But the surrounding environment, and peer culture, encourages parents to not spend much time on nutrition. It used to be that, when I was working on preparing dinner in the kitchen, one of my children would be there with me learning to cook (and learning to accept mistakes). No longer. But, I still cook. About half of the time, I can only call it “preparing” (heating up, combining a few things) but the rest of the time I still cook.
So, in spite of their parents doing the best they can (which, unfortunately, is sometimes not very well at all), children are not ready, and able, to find their own route to healthy practices. Nor should they be. The community, or the “village”, should be doing that. But not in the US.
Don’t forget about cost.
I can buy a nice apple for $1.25 in the US. I can buy a Snickers® candy bar for $1.50 and, often, on sale for that same $1.25 or even a $1. Now, I like Snickers® candy bars and my wife likes them even more. They are one of the more nutritious candy bars but they are still candy with plenty of lovely addictive refined sugar. In Japan, not barraged by ads and peers showing the fast, commercial, path a person would likely usually prefer the apple. How many of you, or your children, would pick the apple?
I like cooking shows and, based upon the number of them produced and the channels dedicated to them, I am not alone. But I can only gape at the healthy cooking shows. The previously mentioned apple is only a single item in a large comparison list between the advertised healthy meal and the easily obtained processed food menu. If a person examines the comparison only from a point of money, the healthy food menu does not often win. But it does win occasionally. But, add the time needed for preparation and cleanup and the scale tips very awkwardly towards the processed food.
School boards are always being requested to not raise taxes. There are areas which can NOT be put off. There are areas which can be put off (maintenance) but will mean even greater expense in the future. Then there are the students and their education. Many parents will use something like Great Schools (https://www.greatschools.org/) to compare schools and try to live in the “best” area, that they can afford, for their children. This site concentrates on test scores and college readiness. They also have statistics about class sizes and compositions and so forth. What they do NOT have is “how good are the lunches?”, “what are the arts and music programs like?” or other non-quantitative areas.
School lunches don’t fall into the quantitative category. Thus, they are an area in which the school board can cut budgets without badly reflecting in the quantitative scores. And they do. A processed lunch that just needs to be heated up and served is not only less expensive that a nutritionally balanced, freshly prepared and cooked, meal — but it is what the student expects and what their peers expect.
We had a friend of the family (not a real close friend but someone we could talk with) who was a nutritionist for the elementary school that our children attended. One day, we heard she had quit — she just couldn’t handle heating up processed food for the children every day anymore. She wanted to use her skills, and experience, and prepare healthy food but that was spitting against the wind.
Children who get accustomed to unhealthy meals are unlikely to make healthy choices in the future.
